If you look at the Instagram page of By Hana El Morshedy, you will see picture after picture of women in their element. They’re at weddings, at events, in bathrooms, taking photos of themselves in mirrors. What you won’t see is simply a dress on its own - not even on a mannequin. This is the goal of designer Hana El Morshedy: to create dresses that embody their owner; ones that capture their spirit.

“There’s confidence that comes from wearing something that truly feels like yours, where nothing feels forced or borrowed,” El Morshedy tells Scene Styled.
Creating an Egyptian couture brand largely came out of her own personal experiences. Seven years ago, El Morshedy began wearing the hijab and found herself facing a wardrobe full of compromise and adjustment. “I struggled to find pieces that truly felt like me,” she remembers, “most designs were originally made to reveal, then adjusted to be modest.” Instead of accepting what was, she started designing for herself. By 2023, what had begun as a personal necessity had become a brand.

The brand, byHanaElMorshedy, “was built with a simple intention: to create pieces that reveal the soul, not the skin - to make every woman feel seen without the need to reveal.” In this, El Morshedy found that modest fashion speaks its own language. When the body is fully covered, she explains, every element has to work harder. More fabric means more balancing variables that need to cohere without clashing. “A modest design has to stand entirely on its own, without relying on exposed skin or hair to complete the look,” she says. “That’s what makes it, to me, a stronger and more intentional form of design.”
El Morshedy comes from a background of graphic design - a world built on composition, balance, and visual language. These instincts, as it turns out, translate easily to the fashion industry. She learned the technical elements from the world around her: “working closely with ateliers, understanding construction, fabrics, and refining my eye through real execution rather than just theory.” This hands-on experience formed her experience for what fashion really is. "The passion to build a language of fashion that speaks without revealing the body is what drove me most," she says.

Three years later, byHanaElMorshedy has grown internationally without ever sacrificing these foundational goals. “I made a very conscious decision early on to design; not to copy or recreate. Every piece is created with intention, from scratch, with its own identity.”
Every one of her pieces begins first with a conversation between herself and her client - long before preliminary sketches begin to take form. This conversation is the beginning of a process that takes between two and three weeks, in which she begins by asking her client about her personality, the occasion the dress is intended for, and what she would like to express. From there, El Morshedy takes measurements before moving into sketching, fabric selection, and tailoring. It is, she says, "a thoughtful, collaborative journey from start to finish."

If a client arrives with a reference image - something they’ve saved from another designer’s page, El Morshedy won’t replicate it. Instead, through conversation, she’ll decipher what it is the client is really drawn to - the feeling, the silhouette, the mood - and translate it into something entirely new. “From there, I shape a piece that reflects their identity, something that suits their body, complements it, and feels genuinely theirs,” she says.
In this sense, much of El Morshedy’s work begins with a feeling rather than a design. Fitting, then, that El Morshedy was drawn to the custom couture model. Couture, in her view, is the only model that makes sense for what she's trying to do. "Every woman is different and deserves something that reflects her individually," she says. Rather than choosing an existing dress off a rack, El Morshedy’s clients are involved in its creation, from the initial conception to the final details.

The resulting dress is, in many ways, the client’s inner self made visible, coming alive through ruffled fabric, sparkling sequins, and laced decorations. In the words of El Morshedy, “her measurements, her preferences, her personality all become part of the design itself. That’s what gives couture its depth, it’s not something you wear, it’s something that’s built around you.”

The most vivid example of this process came to El Morshedy in the form of a wedding dress, over 12,000 kilometres away. Designed for a bride in Los Angeles, the dress took form entirely remotely - through video calls and messages - a level of faith that El Morshedy describes as unforgettable. "She entrusted me with one of the most important days of her life, without prior experience of my bridal work," she says. "That kind of trust is something I carry with me in every piece I create."
Though the brand has grown internationally, its footing remains firmly in Cairo. “Cairo naturally influences everything,” El Morshedy explains, “There’s a richness, contrast, and depth that inevitably shapes your perspective,” even if the brand is not explicitly Egyptian. “At its core,” however, byHanaElMorshedy “was created for the women around me - Egyptian women - to empower them, reflect their personalities, and place a higher value on modesty through design.”

When looking towards the future, El Morshedy is interested in expanding upon the couture model, “developing more conceptual collections that go beyond individual designers, and come together as a full narrative.” She approaches this kind of expansion cautiously, however, seeking always to maintain the same high level of detail and personal connection.

The next time byHanaElMorshedy pops up on your Instagram page, pay close attention to the details making up the elaborate gowns and dresses. What you’re seeing isn’t just a dress, it is a woman who feels completely like themself.