THE FOUNDER’S NOTE

THE WOMAN BEHIND LALEH

Before I knew that one day there would be a name called LALEH, and before I knew that I would create a brand carrying such a deeply personal part of me, there was a home.

And there was warmth.

And there was a little girl.

And that little girl was me.

A child who knew nothing about fashion, brands, or what it meant to create something that carried her name. But she knew one thing:

That sometimes, the smallest things can make the heart feel something immense.

I found beauty in the simplest details, even before I understood why they meant so much to me. In the way things were arranged. In a word said at just the right moment. In a small act of care that no one else noticed. In that feeling of knowing there was always a place you could return to.

Before I understood elegance, I understood comfort.

And before I understood the language of detail, I understood the language of tenderness.

So much of that warmth was connected to Mrs. H — the woman who was my first image of quiet femininity.

She never taught me beauty through words.

I saw it in the way she treated others, in the care she gave, in her generosity, and in her ability to make everything feel warmer than it was.

From her, without ever realizing I was learning, I came to understand that beauty is not about display.

Beauty is care.

It is not abundance.

Beauty is a feeling.

And it is not something we simply show to others, but something we can give them.

The little girl grew up, but a part of her remained unchanged.

That eye for detail stayed.

So did the curiosity that made her wonder:

Why do I feel this way about this place?

Why does this moment leave a deeper impression than another?

And from there came Reem El-Mihy — the name people came to know through her love of photography.

I loved photography because it gave me a way to hold on to things before they became memories.

Sunsets were always close to me. Not simply because they were beautiful, but because they carried something I could feel.

They were moments suspended between two things; between light and disappearance, between the ending of one thing and the beginning of another.

I never wanted a photograph to preserve only what a moment looked like.

I wanted it to preserve what it felt like, too.

For the eye to remember what it saw, and the heart to remember what it felt.

Because every moment carries its own emotion. Every scene has its own soul. And every photograph holds a story that will never return in quite the same way again.

I was never simply capturing what the eye could see.

I was capturing what the heart felt before the moment passed.

Somewhere else within me, Ryoom emerged.

The name closest to my heart.

It became a warmer, more spontaneous space, where I began to discover that beauty was no longer simply something I saw; it was becoming something I expressed.

I became even more fascinated by details.

By the way a color can change the feeling of an entire object.

By how a fabric can carry a personality.

By how one incredibly small detail can transform an entire image.

I never believed in having more simply for the sake of having more.

I loved the idea that everything should have its place, that every detail should have a reason, and that things should be beautiful together — not merely beautiful on their own.

Over time, I realized that this was the kind of beauty that felt most like me.

Beauty that does not need to raise its voice.

Because true elegance is not what catches the eye the fastest.

It is what stays in the memory.

And while my eyes were searching for beauty, life took me down another path.

The path of science.

I became a Clinical Pharmacy student.

It taught me precision, patience, responsibility, and the importance of noticing the smallest details — the ones that can sometimes make the greatest difference.

And it taught me something else that has stayed with me to this day:

Behind every case, there is a person.

And behind every person, there is a story.

True care begins when we try to understand before we judge.

Perhaps that is why I never felt that science and beauty belonged to two separate worlds.

Both taught me to observe, to search, to be precise, and to pause before what others might overlook.

Not every part of the journey was easy.

I began stepping outside my first circle. I became part of different experiences and events. I travelled. I met people from different backgrounds and cultures, and I saw worlds I had never known before.

And there, I began to understand something important:

A person is not shaped only by the place they were born in, but by every person they meet, every experience they live through, every place where they leave a part of themselves — or take a part of it with them.

There was also another name quietly present near the beginning of my story.

Rafif.

A name my mother once loved for me.

A name whose meaning carries softness, lightness, and flow.

It never became the name written on my papers.

And yet, I never felt that it disappeared from the story.

Perhaps because some things do not need to officially belong to us to leave something behind within us.

There are names we never carry, yet somehow they remain close to the heart.

And when I look back at all those chapters now, I do not see separate versions of myself.

I see me.

I see the little girl.

I see the photographer.

I see the student.

And I see every version of myself that passed through one chapter and left something behind for the next.

Perhaps that is why I feel that LALEH did not come from one place.

It came from all of these pieces:

From an eye that learned to preserve moments.

From a heart that held on to the wonder of that little girl.

From a sensibility that searches for harmony.

From a mind that learned to respect the details.

And from a soul that still believes that the most beautiful things are not necessarily the most obvious.

For me, the name Reem carries something I have always loved:

A quiet presence that never needs to impose itself.

A softness that does not mean weakness.

And a strength that needs no harshness.

Perhaps this is the closest description of the spirit behind LALEH:

To see beyond the shape, and to feel beyond the details.

That is why, when I think about the beginning of LALEH, I cannot say that it began with a fashion idea.

Because it did not begin with a piece of fabric.

Or a design.

Or a color.

It began long before that.

It began with everything I had lived:

With a home that taught me the meaning of warmth.

With a woman who taught me that giving can be a form of beauty.

With an eye that learned to preserve moments.

With a love for details.

And with a journey through science that taught me that excellence requires patience and attention.

Then, at some point, all those pieces began to come together.

I began to feel that I did not simply want to capture beauty.

Or arrange it.

Or observe it.

I wanted to create something that carried that feeling.

And that is where LALEH began.

To me, it was never simply a fashion brand.

It was a way of bringing all those pieces together in one place; of transforming everything I had felt throughout the years into something another woman could feel, too.

That is why, when I design a piece, I do not think only about how it looks.

I think about the feeling I want it to leave behind.

About the moment a woman might live in it.

And about the way a piece can become part of her story, rather than simply something she wears.

Because every piece begins with a story, and ends with a feeling.

And when I needed a symbol to carry all of this, the tulip felt like the closest one.

Not simply because it is beautiful, but because it feels like me.

And it feels like LALEH.

A tulip does not reveal everything at first glance.

It grows away from the eye.

It moves through its season.

It takes time.

And then, when its time comes, it blooms.

That is exactly what I feel LALEH represents:

That the things we see as complete today have often been growing for years, in places no one ever saw.

LALEH is not the beginning of an entirely new story.

It is the result of everything that came before it.

It is the little girl who loved meaning.

The woman shaped by life.

The eye that learned to see.

The heart that held on to so much.

And the soul that ultimately chose to turn everything it had lived through into something that could be seen and felt.

Perhaps that is why I chose the tulip.

Because it always reminds me that:

Some beautiful things are not late.

They are simply growing until their time to bloom arrives.

Dr. Reem Mohamed El-Mihy
Founder & CEO, LALEH