That mix of Yemeni heritage, British street culture, and the social glue of youth clubs, became the framework she carried into fashion. When she arrived at Central Saint Martins, the contrast was stark. She remembers feeling the gulf between “real people” and the luxury-driven culture around her. For someone who admits to being shy, the response was direct: put the message on a T-shirt. “If it’s written on the T-shirt, I don’t have to say anything,” she told me. “I’m just wearing what I believe in.” For her, T-shirts were an antidote to fashion’s elitism: accessible, direct, impossible to ignore.

Since graduating from CSM in 2022, Kazna has been recognised well beyond Sheffield. She became the first designer to present a Hijab collection at the MA Fashion show, a moment she says only hit her afterwards when her tutors were in tears. She won the Debut Talent Prize at Fashion Trust Arabia, represented Yemen on a global stage, joined the BFC’s NEWGEN programme, and fronted Kurt Geiger’s People Empowerment campaign. Her work has been seen in London, Dubai, and Doha. But the point for her is never simply to be visible – it’s to bring others with her.

That’s why she often describes fashion as a tool. A way to carry stories forward, raise funds, build pride, and make a protest visible. It’s why her London Fashion Week presentations have doubled as fundraisers for Gaza, or souks where Yemeni and Palestinian makers share space. It’s why her next collaboration, with BUILDHOLLYWOOD, will see her words and images pasted directly onto the street.

Across each of these projects, what matters is the same thing that made her Sheffield film so powerful: a sense of style and a sense of authentic community. Kazna is a designer, but more than that she’s a documenter and an amplifier. Her work points outward, toward neighbours, friends, family, and the overlooked. It asks who gets to be seen, and how.

Growing up in Sheffield, how did your city and community shape your perspective on fashion, identity, and activism?

I didn’t really feel like I was part of a creative community growing up in Sheffield — but I was always very community-orientated. My family is Yemeni, and there are a lot of Yemenis in the city, so I grew up in that kind of tight-knit environment.

Growing up I was always in youth clubs – my siblings and I. My parents were really young when they had us, so it was amazing for them to keep us in the youth club as well. I think that’s really what instilled those community values in us from such a young age.

Now it feels different, almost all those youth clubs have gone in Sheffield. There’s probably only one left that’s really open to the whole community, and even they’re struggling for funding. Sheffield has always felt a bit overlooked when it comes to creative opportunities. There wasn’t much infrastructure for young people who wanted to do fashion or art, so I had to leave to find those chances. But I kept going back, and I still feel a responsibility to represent Sheffield wherever I go.

What’s nice is that now there does seem to be more of a creative community in the city. It feels bigger, with more people collaborating in all sorts of ways.

Your Yemeni heritage feels ever-present in your work; from the values you’ve spoken about, God and family being central, to serving traditional biscuits at shows. Beyond those practical details, what are the more holistic ways that your Yemeni culture continues to shape your worldview and design process?

I don’t want to sound biased because I’m Yemeni, but I do think Yemeni people are the kindest people. Maybe it’s because Yemen is a developing country, but the whole culture is very selfless. You’re taught to prioritise looking after your neighbour before you go forward in life. That’s all I saw growing up, and when I applied it to fashion it was a culture shock compared to London.

It’s really shaped my mentality – building sideways, not building up. Bringing my community with me to opportunities and rejecting things that don’t align with those values. For me it was never money motivated. It’s always been selfless-driven, and that perspective is what guides how I approach life and fashion.

Do you remember any of the early moments when fashion first caught your imagination – the equivalent of those “first albums” people remember in music?

Before Sheffield I actually lived in Liverpool, and my dad was really into fashion. He had corner shops, and people would come in selling Lacoste tracksuits for us. He’d be like, “This is the new tracksuit, you need to wear it.” Maybe it was because he’d just come from Yemen and was excited but seeing that excitement around clothes and how he dressed his kids, made me realise fashion could be a big thing.

He even went to New York once for just three days and came back with two suitcases full of kids’ clothes for me and my siblings. On Eid especially, the outfits were a huge deal – my Dad would have us dressed in Rocawear. I think from a young age I knew fashion mattered, because it was celebrated in my family.

Why did you choose to study fashion, and specifically at Central Saint Martins? And once you got there, what was the experience of being in that academic space actually like for you?

Maybe subconsciously it was always on my agenda, but it only really became clear when I was about 18. My high school was very academic – no fashion or textiles, just fine art – so I didn’t want to go straight into university. I was nervous to tell my parents I wanted to do an art foundation first, but they were completely supportive.

From there, choosing fashion just felt natural. When I finally said it out loud, my dad was like, “I knew it.” I studied in Manchester for my BA, close to home, good vibes, very Northern culture, which suited me.

Then I came to Central Saint Martins for my MA, and it was the complete opposite. Suddenly it was so competitive. Everyone on my course was older, with experience at big fashion brands, and I came straight from undergrad. I felt naïve, and my first year was horrible — I was depressed and ready to quit. But in the second year my tutors really believed in me. They pushed me to explore Islamic modesty from my own perspective, and that encouragement changed everything.

You became the first designer to present a Hijab collection at Central Saint Martins’ MA Fashion show in 2022 – how did it feel to break that ground, and what impact did that moment have on you and your community?

That moment was huge. It wasn’t just about me putting hijabs on a runway — it was about representing my community in a space where we’d never been represented before. I had people from Sheffield coming down to support, and I could see how much it meant to them.

For me personally, it was validating. After struggling through that first year at CSM, to come back with a collection that was so unapologetically rooted in who I am – Yemeni, Muslim, from Sheffield, and to have it celebrated, it gave me the confidence to keep going. It showed me that fashion could be a tool for change, not just for myself but for people who’d never seen themselves in those spaces.

Family and community have often been part of your shows — from your grandmother’s living room recreated at Fashion Week, to your flatmates and friends modelling your collections. Why is it so important for you to weave those stories and people into your presentations?

For me it’s always been really natural. My work has always been quite documentative. I saw so many stories in my community, and that storytelling really influenced my practice – whether it’s through film, fashion, or exhibitions

When I was making my MA collection, I was just designing for the people around me – my friends who wore hijab, my family members. My flatmates would come for fittings, and then they all ended up modelling for me. Some of them are still modelling now. So when people labelled that show as “the first Hijabi collection at CSM,” it only hit me afterwards. At the time, it just felt like something we all went through together.

That’s the same reason I brought my grandmother’s living room to London Fashion Week. Growing up, Sheffield voices didn’t really have a platform. London felt so far away, almost like New York, and I wanted to use the opportunities I had to bring those stories with me. It feels important to make sure my community is seen in spaces that weren’t built for us.

Beyond the runway, you’ve raised funds and campaigned on causes close to you – from Sheffield Town Hall to Yemen and Palestine. How did activism and fashion first start to intersect for you?

At first they were two completely separate things. Fashion was Monday to Friday, and then at weekends I’d go back to Sheffield to do fundraisers, work with councillors, or help out with campaigns.

But I remember during my MA, I once left class early to go to a Palestine protest. My tutors were like, “Where are you going? You’re so behind.” And I just said, “I need to go protest.” That’s when I realised the two parts of my life were always going to collide.

If I feel strongly about something, it’s naturally going to influence my fashion. By the time I started doing London Fashion Week, it had become personal – the politics came first, and the clothes followed.

And carrying that forward into this season – you’ve chosen not to do a London Fashion Week runway show, and instead to host a fundraising event. Can you talk us through that decision?

In my last presentation I created a kind of souk, a market of businesses. That came from Yemeni culture – Yemenis are really entrepreneurial. My dad had corner shops, and in Sheffield there’s a whole street of Yemeni businesses where everyone sells the same things, but there’s no competition. If one shop doesn’t have it, they’ll tell you to go next door. That spirit of community over competition really inspired me.

So for this season, I wanted to take that idea further. I’m doing a two-day pop-up with small businesses and charities – things like Yemeni jewellery, Palestinian embroidery, Egyptian jewellery, soap makers, the kind of stalls you’d find in a market, but placed on the Fashion Week schedule. Everyone’s donating 20% of what they make to Gaza, and most of them are already charities anyway, so it felt like the right way to use that platform.

It’s happening on the 20th and 21st of September, during London Fashion Week.

You’re also collaborating with BUILDHOLLYWOOD this season. Can you tell us what you’ll be putting onto the streets?

It’s going to be a mixture of imagery and text — basically like my work as a whole. Some of the imagery is my community modelling my clothes, photos of people around me, and the graphics that inspire me. Kind of like my Instagram feed, I’m not going to lie.

And then there’ll be text alongside it. Some of it is raising awareness of what’s happening right now, and some of it draws on references from the Qur’an — poetic, political ways of expressing what’s going on. I wanted it to be clever but also meaningful, something with substance.

And how does it feel to take your message away from the screen or runway, and put it directly into the public space on posters and billboards? What do you hope people feel when they see them?

Honestly, it feels amazing. It’s a dream opportunity for me, something I might only get once in a lifetime, so I felt like whatever I put out there had to matter. The BUILDHOLLYWOOD team were so supportive too, which meant a lot, because sometimes when you work with organisations they try to censor you. With this project, I felt free.

What I hope is that people feel inspired. Maybe it’s not just about the image of my collection but the text alongside it. If it can trigger thoughts, spark free thinking, or make someone stop and reflect, then it’s done its job.

Your values are listed on your website. Some of them being humility, sincerity, protecting your neighbour. These run through both your life and work, but how do those principles guide you in an industry that can feel competitive and individualistic?

I think they guide me by reminding me when not to play into the industry. If an opportunity doesn’t align with those principles, I’m fine with stepping away from it. That’s why I don’t feel pressure to follow the usual path of shows or collections every season.

Sometimes the right thing to do is focus on my community or on fundraising instead. For me, fashion is just a tool, and if I can use it in a way that stays true to my values, then I know I’m moving in the right way.

For AW24, your collection was titled ‘What are you fighting for?’. So to put that to you this time around — what are you fighting for?

Well, at the moment the obvious ones are raising awareness for everything happening in Palestine, Sudan, Congo. But I’m also fighting for platforms to actually acknowledge the voices that are already out there. On social media people are literally telling us what they feel and what they’re going through, but so many don’t want to listen. So I’m fighting for that change — for people to open their ears.