Morocco's Khol Studio Is Forging Femininity Into Armor

The first thing Hamza Glamouss and Valentin Nicot ever made together was a contradiction: a masculine bolero cut like armor with shoulders squared to an almost brutal sharpness, attached to a draped, backless dress that trailed like water. They were still students then, buried in pattern-making classes, but the piece crystallised what would later become KHOL’s ethos: strength could be sensual, precision could be soft. “It captured exactly what we wanted a woman to feel in our clothes: unapologetically tough, but never losing that sense of poetry, sensuality, and freedom. That clash, that mix, is what set the DNA of the brand from the very beginning,” Nicot tells SceneStyled.

They named their Paris-based studio KHOL, after the black pigment Glamouss grew up seeing in Morocco, on his mother’s eyes, even on men, something both protective and seductive. Nicot, a former painter, brought a sculptor’s rigor to their tailoring. Together, they built a language they call tough tailored poetry. It’s still the best description of what they do.

KHOL’s world is balanced between Rabat and Paris. From Rabat comes the intimacy of cultural ritual, khol as an everyday gesture, sensual but spiritual, symbolic. From Paris, an entirely different discipline, craft stripped of overabundance, black-and-white elegance without embellishment. “Paris gave us precision,” Glamouss says. “It taught us that the right cut can say everything.”

Their latest collection, Attachment Theories, takes its name from psychology’s map of human connection, anxious, avoidant, the constant negotiation of closeness and distance. “We wanted that tension in the clothes,” Nicot explains. Sharp tailoring is undone by silks, flowers consume lapels. Every piece is a push and pull, strength meeting fragility without either side winning. “The idea was to imagine a world where the flower, which historically has always been just an ornament on a man’s tuxedo, started taking over the entire wardrobe of the woman we wanted to dress.”

Craft, for them, is the core language. “We start with emotion,” Glamouss says. “Tailoring gives it a body.”

The studio begins with images and impressions rather than garments, a gesture, a figure, a remembered scene. These are layered until they form a world. Only then does the pattern-cutting begin. Shoots are treated as final chapters, where the atmosphere of the collection must survive translation into imagery. Casting, movement, silence, each chosen to preserve what they call “the poetry of the piece.”

“Each piece carries a reference, whether it’s to an artist, a persona like Marlene Dietrich, or other figures who embody the core duality of the brand,” Glamouss remarks.

KHOL’s clothes are meant to amplify, not transform. “It’s not about costume,” Nicot insists. “It’s about revealing what’s already there.” In Rabat, the work resonates as cultural continuity. In Paris, it’s praised for its precision. Elsewhere, audiences choose their own entry point: some find toughness, others tenderness. For the designers, the true success is when both are felt at once.

Glamouss and Nicot thrive on friction, collaborations, unexpected influences, anything that unsettles their aesthetic just enough to evolve it. They hint at new explorations into ritual and protection, clothes as modern talismans.

For now, KHOL remains what it was on that first day in the classroom: a staunch refusal to choose between force and fluidity. Their bolero still has its shoulders, their dress still moves like liquid. Together, they speak a language that feels entirely their own.