With La Touriste, Renaissance Renaissance turns inward. Cynthia Merhej crafts a sunlit world of softness and strength—a quiet rebellion where femininity finds power in stillness.
Renaissance Renaissance, founded Cynthia Merhej in 2016, blends her family’s couture heritage with modern femininity. Raised in Beirut in a lineage of female couturiers, she studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art before returning to collaborate with local ateliers, including her mother’s. Based between Paris and Beirut, she has been a semi-finalist for the LVMH Prize and part of Net-a-Porter’s Vanguard program. Her designs have been worn by Chloë Sevigny, Caroline Polachek, and Lily McInerny, cementing her reputation as one of the Middle East’s most compelling independent voices in fashion.
La Touriste draws inspiration from Tracey Emin’s The Bed, depicting a lady living in her own inner landscape made up of light-colored, sunlit space characterized by tenderness, seclusion, and the lovely messiness of existence. Every piece blurs the lines between control and release, softness and strength, intimacy and daywear. Comfort in one’s safe zone is further embodied by a varsity t-shirt that reads «Men Not Allowed» in both Arabic and English. Cynthia Merhej asks us to rediscover aspiration in «La Touriste,» not in excess or activity, but in silence. In the peaceful pleasure of just existing.
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