Bored during class one day, Caroline Yassa picked up her pencil and started doodling. First it was anything that came to mind, then she started sketching out dresses. The more lead met paper, the more intentional her lines became and the more perfect she wanted the two-dimensional dresses to be. And so began the career of one of Egypt’s youngest fashion designers.

Yassa’s small frame and timid smile belie the designer’s drive and eagerness. Her gaze is powerful and screams, “I can do it.” And do it she has. Just 18 years old, Yassa last month launched her first evening gown collection at her own fashion show at the Hotel Novotel Cairo Airport to great acclaim. Already she has orders for dresses and requests to have her collection added to the roster of several online boutiques.

“I don’t know how I will let my dresses go; I worked really, really hard on each one of them,” Yassa says. But fashion is a business like any other and, clearly, demand for Yassa’s designs is high. “My idea is not to make [my line] expensive; I want it to be special, handmade but available to anyone.”

 If there’s one word to describe Yassa, it would be perfectionist. There wasn’t a single aspect of December’s show that she didn’t have a hand in. From buying every yard of cloth at Wekalat El-Balah to designing, drawing the patterns, cutting and sewing to accessorizing her dresses, the work was thought out down to the most minute detail. Her friends were all there to help, but she would only let them take care of the music and photography; the designing was all Yassa.

Her perfectionism and determination, after all, were how her career began. When her father, Ashraf Yassa, saw his daughter’s first doodles and sketches, covered in the eraser marks of trial and error, he knew she had a calling. Unlike many parents who might push aside fashion design as a hobby, Yassa’s father urged her to pursue her passion seriously.

That’s where Mona Zamer — known professionally as Madame Zamer — came in. A major name on Egypt’s fashion scene, she once ran her own school called Madame Zamer’s Fashion School, offering a French fashion diploma. She is now retired and gives private lessons in her Downtown home.

“I knew [Zamer] was an amazing haute couture mentor who taught many people, my own mother included,” says the young designer’s father. “When she began offering courses at home, she accepted Caroline as one of her students.”

But Yassa was just 16 years old at the time and the idea of an eight- to twelve-month course was daunting. With her parent’s encouragement and a little of her own determination, she overcame the cold feet and jumped in headfirst. Two days a week Yassa would head Downtown after school and spend four hours working with Zamer, then it was right back home to finish her schoolwork and practical work for Zamer’s classes. Where other 16-year-olds might be in bed by 10pm, Yassa was calling it a night at 4am, only to be up again at 6am for school. For Yassa, it was the most difficult and amazing year of her young life.

“After the first few classes, she would come home to say it was hard, but that she loved it so much she was going again,” her father boasts proudly. “Every day she would say the same thing to push herself, until she finally finished the course.”

Soon Yassa was sewing dresses, jackets, blouses and swimwear for herself. It was only when one of her colleagues from Zamer’s classes held her own fashion show, however, that Yassa was inspired to take her dream to the next level.

“I felt I really wanted to show the world my designs. I was ready to show people what I’ve got,” says Yassa. “I [wanted to] challenge myself to see how far would I go, push my limits.”

With a plan to create her own line of evening gowns, Yassa went straight to her pillars of support: her parents. “I thought it was a risk,” says her father. “But I was ready to take it for my daughter.”

For almost a year, Yassa meticulously planned her fashion debut. Three months before the event she began working on each dress completely on her own. “She even refused to show us the dresses before the show,” her dad says.

Yassa’s sheer passion and youthful zest let her see beyond the tangible aspects of fashion and focus on the bigger picture. “I want to make everything myself,” she says. “Even if I don’t make a lot, when someone buys a dress she’ll know she’s wearing something original, made by me and truly handmade.”

As the eve of the show approached, so grew the nerves and doubts in Yassa’s mind. Three days before, Yassa’s only sewing machine broke down and she couldn’t complete the signature statement piece that traditionally ends the show with a bang to showcase the designer’s true creativity. But Yassa’s perseverance and support from her family and friends urged her to press on.

 With Yassa completely at the helm, the big night was stressful but successful. “I was screaming in the backstage room because sometimes there was no one helping me and I was dressing the models alone,” Yassa says. When the models were hurriedly flinging off her dresses and tossing them to the ground to change into the next gown, she almost completely lost it. “[I would say], ‘Please take care, these dresses are so valuable and important to me, and I really worked hard on each and every one.’”

Her hard work was rewarded on the day of the show with a room so full that people were struggling to find a place to stand. The applause grew louder with each dress that came down the catwalk as the audience was enthralled with the young designer’s simple, elegant gowns. When Yassa came out to take her final bow at the end of the show, the magnitude of it all hit her.

“I was proud and astonished,” Yassa says. “I was so afraid before the show that I convinced myself that every first-timer will make mistakes and have to learn from them. But after the show I was convinced that, in my opinion, everything was perfect.”

“If Caroline wasn’t talented, she wouldn’t have made something like this. I taught many people, but very few created something this impressive,” Zamer told Yassa’s father after the show, which garnered so much interest and so many requests for dresses that Yassa hasn’t even had a chance to set prices.

So what’s next for Yassa? The sky seems like the limit for someone so young and talented, particularly in a budding fashion industry like Egypt’s. With the likes of Amina K. and Dina Said already beginning to carve out Egypt’s fashion design industry, there is arguably more room for new talent now than ever before.

“I would like to study fashion in Milan, but I think it will be hard because I am so attached to Egypt and its people,” Yassa says. Demand for another collection is high, she says, but because she makes every dress entirely from scratch herself, it is unlikely to be soon.

 “I can’t imagine anything I enjoy more. I feel myself in the designs, its like an addiction,” says Yassa whose zeal means she cares little about the fame and fortune of it all. “I just want to have perfect quality and do everything with my own hands. I want to have something small but perfect.” et