Between the Buttons and Beads: Unveiling Nour Afifi’s Artistic Vision 

Edited by: Karim Moataz 

Photo Taken By: Mai Mahmoud

She carefully feeds the thread through the needle, picking up three red beads and weaving them through the sleeve of a lace dress. 

With every stitch and every bead, pieces of herself are laced within the garment as the character slowly comes to life.

Her talent then began to transcend beyond the TV screen, where her work as an assistant costume designer was screened in Mohamed Sami’s Nasl El Aghrab in Ramadan of 2021 and Kamla Abu Zekry’s Betlou’ El-Rouh in Ramadan of the following year. 

Nour Afifi grew up in Alexandria and graduated from AUC in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in history, and ever since then, she has immersed herself in the realm of costume design, carving herself a space within independent theater and television. Since then, she became a rising star in the costume design world.

She always excelled in her education, especially during her school years, despite attending a school that didn’t offer many humanities options. 

From a young age, she always leaned towards the more creative side of life, cutting out pictures of her favorite clothes from magazines and carrying them around in an envelope or sketching clothes whenever she had the time. 

“I spent my weekends downloading and watching films like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette; this is what shaped me as a child,” said Afifi. 

Afifi expressed how she’s always been fascinated by the intersection between fashion and storytelling but never noticed the link between them until she grew older and discovered her passion. 

She lived vicariously through costumes, experiencing various lifetimes and characters through fashion, knowing that one day, she’d be able to pursue a career in design. 

“When I was young and used to go to my grandmother’s house on a weekly basis, I would run to her closet and pull out all of her scarves and accessories and dress up my sister and three other cousins for a fashion show where all my family members watched,” said Afifi. 

She recounted how she and her cousin would always fight during those shows because her cousin would try to change the outfits that Afifi selected, but Afifi wouldn’t agree.

Afifi was brought up in a creative environment as her mother graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Alexandria, where she specialized in interior design. 

Her mother encouraged her to explore creativity from a young age, taking her to try out ballet dancing, art, and piano classes. 

“She was convinced that I should expand my expertise as much as possible so that if something doesn’t work out, then I have others to fall back on,” said Afifi. 

She decided to leave Alexandria, she felt as though there was no place to grow into who she wanted to be in the city, and that is when she applied to AUC. 

She initially applied with the intent of majoring in visual arts, but that all changed when she took a course called “Introduction to Technical Theater,” where she learned everything related to theater. 

That’s where she flourished; any moment she had to spare, she would spend it at the costume shop, determined to expand her creativity and abilities in costume design. 

She explained that she is able to reach out and bring each character to life through the costumes she creates for them. When it comes down to creating the costume, she sifts through racks and racks of clothes, breathing life into lifeless pieces. 

She participated in various AUC productions, first as a helpful hand, and then worked her way up to the position of assistant costume designer. This experience paved the way for her out-of-university opportunities. 

Samah El Morshedy, who worked closely with Afifi as the costume shop supervisor during productions from 2017 onwards, described her as hard-working and diligent, perfectly encapsulating her work ethic. 

“She loves to learn and do everything right; she goes out of her way to complete the hard tasks. I’ve seen and worked with many people before and after her, but you can tell how she does everything with dignity and passion,” said El Morshedy. 

In her last semester of university, she was nominated by a colleague to work as a costume designer at an independent play called Al The’b Yohaded Almadeena (“The Wolf Destroys the City”), where she first met her large group of friends. One of them being Nour Ibrahim, an AUC alumna who majored in Theater and is currently working in corporate storytelling. 

“When you get into a costume, you feel it. The costumes put you into character, and she always picked the right ones. The details were always accurate, from the bruise makeup to the point where you would feel it as if it were real. She goes into every single detail of what’s going to make this person feel like this character,” said Ibrahim. 

She graduated during a globally solitary time, the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, giving her the time to build up her portfolio and resume her master’s degree applications. 

The following period was packed with various projects in cinema and theater. 

“I needed a break; I burnt out really quickly. I kept going up the ladder of opportunity at a very break-neck pace and reached a point where I wasn’t learning anything anymore. As you go up, the magnitude of your mistakes gets larger, and that’s when I needed time to reconsider and process it all,” said Afifi. 

During that period, she learned the basics of costume design for TV and Film, where she was the recipient of the Gouna Film Festival’s Cinegouna Award for the Costume Design and Film and Television workshop in 2021. 

As well as, returning as a costume designer at AUC to help out with some of the productions, her latest being Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Blood Wedding,” which debuted from March 2 to March 7. 

Habiba El Deeb, a graphic design junior and her assistant costume designer for “Blood Wedding,” expressed how Afifi carries the same essence as a professor and how her passion is carried forward in everything she does or creates. 

“Because of how much she knows and understands the craft, it’s easy for her to draw inspiration; she makes it look so effortless. You can tell that all of her ideas are original but are versed from so many other great things,” said Deeb. 

In just a matter of a few months, Afifi is going to start a new chapter in her life, flying all the way to the United States to complete her master’s degree in costume design at the University of Washington to enhance her theoretical and practical techniques further.