​Explore the evolution of the Kimono Capsule System through a series of conversation on how it began, inspiration, process and purpose.

Film by PJ Guerra

"It's not so much about what you wear.. it's about how you feel when you wear it."

VIDEO 1: KIMONO EVOLUTION:
​ HOW IT BEGAN

VIDEO 2: MEET THE DESIGNER: STYLE INSPIRATION, MUSES AND PHILOSOPHY

VIDEO 3: RITA'S KIMONO EVOLUTION DESIGN GLOSSARY

WHERE I AM NOW

"Embodied authorship- this is where my work lives now."
​- Rita Ghanime

DESIGNER VISION

Rita Ghanime is a Los Angeles based designer, stylist and creative director with nearly three decades of experience in the fashion industry. Her work has touched a wide spectrum of cultural figures including actors, musicians, artists, directors, DJs and global executives, creating garments that embody the highest expression of personal style.

Her design philosophy is rooted in what she calls embodied authorship. Each garment begins as a vision and is brought into physical form through intention, design and craftsmanship. The kimono silhouette has become her signature canvas through which these ideas take shape.
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The brand began with Rita personally sewing and infusing intention into each piece. As the work evolved and demand grew, her role expanded into directing the creative vision while collaborating with skilled makers who help bring the collections to life.
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Today the garments continue to carry this philosophy of intentional creation. Each piece reflects the original vision and energetic intention that has defined the brand since its beginning.

Her current focus is the development of a seven city, seven piece monochromatic capsule collection, where each city is expressed through a specific color frequency that embodies the tone and spirit of that place. These capsule collections form the foundation of international expansion through one curated retail partner in each city.

THE SEVEN INTERNAL CITIES

Each city carries a mood, a feeling, and  a past or future memory waiting to be expressed in a color wave that feels distinctly aligned with it’s unique pulse. The Seven City Kimono Capsule collection embodies a way of moving through the world as an ever-evolving renaissance man/woman and modern global citizen that transcends geography, separateness and even sexuality. It’s the interconnected unity of humanity.  The collection offers a way to enter those places both outwardly in a physical sense and inwardly into a private sojourn.


The city editions are beyond geographic references or colors assigned to locations. Each city is a portal of creation. Its streets and architecture hold the magic of art channeled into music, fashion, literature and human exchanges that came through it. A city becomes meaningful through the people who have made something there, those who are remembered by history and those whose inspire us now through contemporary life.
Each city is landmark to people whom have inspired me in some way. Some were noted icons whom I admired from another era  and never knew personally, and yet many I have met through my own her-story. All of them form part of the internal map. They are the friends, artists, collaborators, strangers, lovers, family members and muses who awakened a way of seeing, feeling, or living and be-ing.

We absorb a city through experience, memory and imagination. We carry its people and its aesthetic codes with us. Each edition is a way of activating that inner relationship through clothing.
A city is geography, but it is also memory, influence, encounter and creation. We carry its art, its people and its frequency inside us.

Tradition Reinterpreted
The kimono is a deeply traditional garment, but my intention has never been to treat it as an archive or costume. I reinterpreted it as a wardrobe staple: something that can live naturally in the modern day, move with the body and become part of a person’s real life. The traditional form is honored, but it is allowed to breathe differently.

The same principle appears in the drop-crotch pant. Its lineage reaches into my Lebanese heritage and the shalwar  family of silhouettes. I translated that ancestral shape into a contemporary pant that can move between cultures, genders, cities and occasions. The collection takes an inherited idea and gives it a new present day feeling.

My own visual history is also part of the work. There are echoes of the ease and bohemian freedom of the 1970s, alongside the restraint and minimalism of the 1990s, when I was young and absorbed runway shows and fashion imagery. Those references meet the innate style of my mother and father, whose way of dressing taught me that an elegant garment can belong beautifully to both a man and a woman. It’s the notion of sharing a philosophy and wardrobe with those you love. It’s such an intimate exchange, to share the very fabric that touch your body with another.

The present is built on history. We do not have to live in the past to honor it. We can carry it with us, reinterpret it and give it a new life.

A Modular Wardrobe for Living
The capsule is designed as a system rather than a series of isolated outfits. Its pieces can stand alone or connect with one another. They create a wardrobe that is considered once and then lived in repeatedly. The intention is to remove the pressure and overthinking that can surround getting dressed.
A person should be able to move through an entire day with ease and still feel elegant, beautiful and fully themselves. The clothing does not demand constant adjustment or explanation. It flows with the wearer. A piece can be thrown over jeans, worn with a white shirt or combined into a complete monochromatic look. The system keeps working as the day, the setting and the wearer change.

Feeling good is not secondary to style. It is the concept. When a garment is made with intention, feels beautiful on the body and gives the wearer confidence, dressing becomes an act of alignment rather than performance.
Think about it once. Then get dressed, feel amazing and live.

Fluidity of Silhouette and Identity
The unisex and one size nature of the collection is not merely a practical feature. It reflects a wider fluidity in contemporary life. Identity, sexuality, creativity and the way we inhabit the body are not always fixed. The silhouette allows for movement rather than enforcing a narrow idea of who a garment belongs to. 

A low-cut sheer caftan can be extraordinary on a man or a woman. It’s the way the clothing creates space for interpretation. It lets softness, structure, sensuality and strength exist together. To lead with embodiment, curiosity and of course, your heart.
This fluidity is also visceral. The garments drape, layer and move. They allow the wearer to travel through a city, an occasion or an internal shift without becoming trapped in a fixed costume. 
The clothes support becoming.

Color as a City Frequency
The color of each city edition arrived intuitively. It was not simply a trend decision or a literal translation of a flag, landmark or postcard. Each color felt aligned with the intimate feeling of its city. The color became a frequency: a way of carrying the atmosphere of that place on the body.
Because the system is modular and often monochromatic, color becomes both emotional and functional. A full city edition creates a complete field of feeling. A single piece can also enter an existing wardrobe and alter its energy. The city colors can cross borders freely. The London Edition can be worn in Paris; the Paris Edition can be worn in Berlin. A city is not a rule. It is an invitation…

The purpose is to let the wearer move through any city feeling elegant, expressive and at home. The collection offers a point of connection, so that arrival does not have to feel like estrangement.
Wear the city as a frequency. Enter it already connected, so you are not a stranger in a strange city.
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Sustainable Fabric: Memory and New Life
The philosophy of renewal also lives in the materials. Deadstock fabrics are often described as castaways, but they are fabrics that were made and never given their full life. Archive vintage textiles carry another kind of memory from another era. Working with these materials allows something overlooked or unused from all over the world to become reactivated.
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This is sustainability as a creative practice. It is not only about reducing waste. It is about recognizing possibility in what already exists, choosing with intention and allowing fabric to reenter the world through a garment that will be worn repeatedly. The material’s previous history is not erased. It becomes part of the new piece and the legacy what these heirloom pieces emulate.

​The CITYSCAPE has more to do with the people inhabiting the city now and those who created there from past- and less about the asthetic landscape and Mother Nature.
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"Alchemy is when intentions and thoughts transform and charge something seemingly inanimate and give it meaning, purpose and life. My Kimonos are charged because I put intention into them. We all have this power, we just forget we have it and I am reminding people how to do it. And I do this through my Kimonos. Essentially, my Kimonos are  magic made physical."
- Rita Ghanime
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INTENTIONAL FASHION = SLOW FASHION
"I am not in the fashion life cycle industry simply to create products and make a profit. My work is rooted in purpose, consciousness and connection. Fast fashion is already shifting as consumers become more aware of the environmental and cultural impact of their choices.
Slow fashion and conscious design are deeply aligned with how I approach my work. Investing in something you fall in love with and wear for years brings deeper intention into the buying process. Fill your closet with pieces you will cherish and live in for a long time.

"I approach the creation of each Kimono as an extension of my own personal creative practice. When I envision and create the first incarnation of that design the garment then carries the same frequency of intention, connection, expression and possibility."- RG
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Rita's extensive fashion industry experience spans from her early twenties with an innovative start in trend-forecasting at national retail brands, and then in PR, where she merged her love of writing and promoting fashion designers - she made the move into Styling and worked with thousands of independent musicians all over the world. It was during this time that she began making clothing for artists and then developed her own unisex-kids brand  (inspired by her son) and then, by fate moved into the Kimono-stratosphere in which she has spent the last 8 years evolving and flowing abundantly within.

PHOTO CHRISTINE CHOI

PHOTO POLINA RABSTV

Video Production:  Garret Gaston
VIDEO 1 Music Credits (in order):Don't Turn It Off by  40 Thieves, Zen Brennan Green remix/ Unknown by Saschienne /Riders on The Storm by the Doors, Rapha Stamatopoulos remix/ I Fell in Love by Gidge
VIDEO 2 Music Credit (in order): green to blue by daniel.mp3 ©2002/ Ik Areas Wahe Guru by White Sun ©2016/ Versailles (Hold) by Christian Löffler ©2020
​VIDEO 3 Music Credit: Home- M.A.N.D.Y, Book Shade, Kolletiv Turmstrasse ©2012