For artist Karimah Hassan, clothes, like paint, are meant to be mixed

At the time of our call, Karimah Hassan is in Beirut, Lebanon, where she’s just wrapped up her solo exhibition Soleil and where she’s now in the middle of an art residency. She appears onscreen in a flowing printed kaftan layered over a printed swimsuit. “Two different prints,” she clarifies, her arms jangling softly with bracelets—one silver, one gold—and her neck laced with amulets that shimmer against the light. It’s the sort of look that reads more thrown-on than styled.

The London-based artist’s colour-drenched, joy-soaked canvases have appeared everywhere from the Alexander McQueen-founded Sarabande Foundation’s studios to the windows of Burberry stores. An alumnus of the Royal College of Art, where she studied Architecture, Hassan found her way to painting via murals, jazz, and a fascination with human expression. Her Strangers’ Yearbook project, which comprised portraits drawn from conversations and selfies of people she’s never met, made waves online during the COVID-19 lockdown and is now permanently installed at London’s King’s Cross. Since then, she’s painted in lavender fields, on sidewalks, and across time zones. She often travels with a sketchbook, watercolours, paint brushes, and even a travel easel.

A quick glance at Hassan’s Instagram feed reveals that she also dresses with the same intuitive layering that applies to her art. The 30-something multidisciplinary painter has always been taken with fashion (“since I was a kid pulling pages out of magazines and drawing the looks”). Her style has shapeshifted over the years—from gypsy skirts and bandanas to a sportswear phase, a stark all-black uniform in architecture school, and today, a richly textural wardrobe that borrows freely from the masculine and the mystical. Cowboy boots, gold silk, white shirts worn like armour. “I love combining textures, colours, and silhouettes. To me, it’s easy—like this snakeskin goes with this green leather. It might be bold to some, but I just see the harmony of textures and colours.”

Planning ahead or having a uniform? Not her thing. “I’ve tried it before, but if I’m not feeling it; everything feels like a lie,” she says. “I can’t plan an outfit the night before. I have to go with what I’m feeling in the moment.”

In the studio, that means clothes she can move in. Some days it’s a white T-shirt with jeans or a cashmere jumper she really shouldn’t get paint on but can’t resist because of how soft it is. On other days it’s a skirt with enough swish to make brushstrokes feel like dance moves. “I’m not so precious. I don’t mind if I get some paint on my clothes, it’s a story.” Outside the studio, she follows the same intuitive rule: “If I plan too much, it just looks too put-together. I like it when something’s not quite right but still totally me.”

Hassan’s art—all bold strokes, saturated colour, and tactile layering—bleeds naturally into her wardrobe. “The more confident I get with saying it’s okay to be colourful and bold, the more I want to bring that into my environment and how I dress,” she says. “Beauty really is a mentality. I want to put beauty into everything.”

Her style signifier? Cowboy boots, worn long before they became a trend. “I love cowboy boots because I can cycle in them, motorcycle in them, wear them to the studio, to a rave or to the beach,” she says. “Same with a leather jacket. Or a beach dress I can wear eight different ways. A white shirt I can wear over a swimsuit or under a jumper. I travel so much that I see it as a fun challenge: I’ve got these 12 things—what can I do with them? Form and function,” she grins.

She has her favourite brands—Sézane, Reformation, Whistles, Julia Allert, Rat & Boa, & Other Stories—and her aspirational ones (Chanel, Saint Laurent). She rattles off names of creative directors, stylists, and photographers like a fashion history grad. “It’s like a chess game,” she says. “Watching these directors move between houses, seeing how they carry their signature with them, and how a brand’s identity shifts—it’s inspiring to me.” She points to Calvin Klein’s Kate Moss era and the way it defined the undone aesthetic; Bianca Jagger in her Saint Laurent years, bohemian and sharp in equal measure; Jimi Hendrix, who embraced his character, clashed patterns; and Sabato de Sarno, who steered Gucci into new territory. “Even if some people don’t see fashion as art, I do. The creative director, to me, is a true artist.”

Hassan is not a hoarder despite her enthusiasm for the fashion world. “My wardrobe is the width of my shoulders, times two,” she says. “I have five pairs of boots—red Ganni cowboy boots, snakeskin boots, purple boots, black boots, chunky ’70s brown boots.” But otherwise, she shops sparingly, almost accidentally. “I don’t shop online,” she says. “If I find something when I’m travelling and it has a story, I’ll buy it. I love repeating clothes because they gather memory. The same skirt in London, in Beirut, at a show opening. It becomes more valuable each time I wear it, not less.”

If her style has a throughline, it’s emotional intelligence. She wears jewellery like talismans—black onyx for protection, silver for cleansing, gold for reflection—and mixes antique heirlooms with new finds. She also dresses to shift energy. “Sometimes I want to feel feminine and light. Sometimes I want to feel strong and androgynous. It’s about tuning into how I need to move through the day.”

Hassan is often asked if she’ll one day launch her own line; she wouldn’t be surprised if she does, but she is in no rush. “You can imagine this kaftan I’m wearing in one of my prints. But I’ve been lucky enough to have my eyes open to fashion as a business, which is a whole beast—production, distribution, marketing. I’m happy doing collaborations, having a vision, without taking on all that right now.”

For now, she’s busy with her art, travelling around the world, and her newsletter titled Gremlins—a nod to the cult ’80s film about deceptively cute creatures that morph into monsters under the right conditions. “I’m a gremlin,” she says. “Cute on the surface, but when something unlocks that creative monster inside, it’s a whole other force. Everyone has a creative gremlin inside.”

It’s a fitting metaphor for someone whose style, like her work, thrives on spontaneity. No mood boards, no packing lists, no rules. Just a kaftan, a sketchbook, some watercolours, and, more often than not, a pair of cowboy boots.