How a Global Crisis Led to Lebanese Label ‘Ta Gueule’s’ Inception

Beirut-based streetwear label Ta Gueule started off selling just one item: face masks. Amidst a backdrop of economic and political turmoil, and a world-wide health crisis, the budding brand became a lifeline for founders Toni Sawaya and Akram Skaff, and in the following years, it became a full-fledged streetwear sensation. If it wasn’t for Ta Gueule, they’d likely not be in Lebanon. Now they could never see themselves living anywhere else.

“I was eager to move out and just never look back,” Creative Director Sawaya tells SceneStyled. “We were preparing to move to Montréal after the revolution. Our tickets were booked, we were fully ready to move away. Then Corona happened.”

The future suddenly looked completely indeterminable. “I was really not okay. Lebanon was suffering. Everything was really black around us. I had no other choice but to bring my own happiness.”

With virtually all their savings disappearing during the crisis, and their future plans destroyed, Ta Gueule launched their first product, a face mask with a large asterisk across its front, representative of the brand’s name, which, for the uninitiated, roughly translates to ‘shut the f*ck up’.

“We started communicating, being opinionated. Subtly, we were saying ‘let the earth do the talking.’” Making the brand a platform for expressing opinion sits extremely high on Sawaya’s list of priorities. “I’m someone who gives my opinion loudly. I don’t give two flying f*cks, I really don’t. Ta Gueule will always be an opinionated brand.”

With an emphasis on mobilising Lebanese craftspeople who’d left their work due to the revolution and due to the crisis, he explained how, at this nascent stage of the label, they did everything themselves, from cutting the masks and delivering them to the tailors to packaging and sending out orders. Before they knew it, Ta Gueule’s bold design had taken Beirut by storm, and people started to expect big things from Sawaya and Skaff’s little project.
And then there was the blast. Sawaya felt that silence wasn’t an option; they had to raise their voice.

Their first T-Shirt, bearing ‘bittersweet is the journey’ in both Arabic and English, was released, a subtle ode to Beirut’s tumultuous recent history, and a bid to spread hope in a time of heartbreaking loss and demoralising hopelessness.

Although Ta Gueule barely had two T-Shirts to rub together at this stage, they started to captivate swathes of attention across Lebanon, Egypt, and Dubai. “Honestly I don’t know why or how, but we started getting invited to a lot of events. And then somehow, we were invited to exhibit at Dubai Fashion Week. We still barely knew our identity as a brand.”

This deadline, which FYI was only a month away, became the catalyst for their first full collection, and the crystallisation of Ta Gueule’s identity.

Fast forward to their latest collection ‘The New Chaos’, the pain and the beauty of the modern Lebanese experience still serves as their guide, their reason. It was inspired by their friends who became refugees all over the world, overnight. “These people are fantastic designers, creative people, educated people, it doesn’t matter. They were treated like shit everywhere. The New Chaos is what we are living through right now.”

At this moment in our conversation I began wondering how on earth someone goes about establishing a clothing company in such a hostile economic and social environment. Whilst this very struggle is making Lebanon suffer in so many ways, it was indeed what birthed Ta Gueule.

“It is super challenging,” admitted Sawaya, who started the label with virtually no money. “All my money vanished with the banks,” he explained. With the little he had saved for the Montréal move that never came, he got Ta Gueule off the ground.
Six months in, and they had their very own atelier. “We sustained ourselves somehow. Despite all these obstacles, we grew.”

In spite of this success, the prospect of keeping the brand in Lebanon is becoming increasingly bleak.
“We insist that the DNA of the brand remains Lebanese. We’ll do anything to make this happen, but now I don’t know if this will be possible,” he explained. “We’re suffocating. If things go the way they’re going, you will see Ta Gueule being made in Portugal. The design is here, the vision is here, everything is here, except for the production quality - nothing is available anymore. The stamina of people in this country is waning. Nobody is excited to work; people are tired, everybody is leaving.”

After dissecting its past, and its struggle, we moved on to discussing the beacon of hope the brand has become for others. Sawaya described this as his ‘biggest pride’.

“We used to get so many Instagram DMs asking how we did it, and we used to just tell them everything, we’d give our entire recipe away - and we still do.”
“We all lost everything we had. We had to start from scratch again. The success of the brand gives people hope that even in the worst conditions, you can thrive. If we could do it, anyone can do it.”