KALEIDOSCOPE
During his first few teenage years in the small American city - home to some of the first people he came out to - he slowly began to understand just what she meant. “Those years were especially formative to my work ethic and the way I think about things,” he said, laughing at how confused he was when his teacher first said that. “Now I look back on it, those four years I was in that high school, those were the years I developed these really important analytical skills I took to university.” These skills were applied and further developed through his work as a research assistant for Ryerson’s Centre for Fashion Diversity and Social Change (FDSC). There, he works alongside professor Ben Barry, maintaining their social media accounts, managing the website and being the centre’s main research assistant. Ghanam shares the FDSC’s perspective on including diversity in discussions on social change. “The centre encourages a lot of collaborative projects to bring in as many voices as you can to the table,” he said. “We need to be able to cover as much as we can and be as specific as we can and make sure that people aren’t being left out or misrepresented.” Studying fashion at Ryerson as a master’s student has allowed Ghanem to “understand fashion as a tool for social change.” He said it is a whole different experience to study this idea than to experience the effects of it yourself. “I am always trying to take risks,” he said over lunch, poised with a fish taco in one hand and a stack of napkins in the other. “I wore a skirt for the first time in August when I was in New York and it was such a new experience to see the way that people interacted with me.” His research allowed him to explore theories about how fashion and gendered clothing are evolving - more so for women who wear
menswear than vice versa. This gave him a new perspective about the experiences he had this summer during a music festival. “The security guard was very confused about what to do because they don’t pat down women,” he shared. “But I was a male wearing a skirt and he was pretty stunned.” Ghanem said Ryerson and the Faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD) gave him the resources he needed for his work. “It’s nice to know that FCAD cares about fashion,” he said. “Historically, fashion has not been seen as important in terms of scholarly work. So to have a master’s program which is very scholarly on fashion, is in itself an awesome opportunity.” His road to Ryerson was a long one though. Ghanem went to two different high schools before attending Carleton University for journalism. After not making the cut into the second year of the program, Ghanem transferred to the University of Victoria where he graduated with a degree in art history and a minor in journalism. He decided to pursue a master’s degree in fashion, but was torn between Ryerson and the Parsons School of Design in New York City. In the end, he went with the only university in Canada that has a fashion master’s program. “I feel like Ryerson has given me space to really discover what I want to focus on and what is important to me,” he said. “Who knows if I would have had that space elsewhere.” His many layers of identity are not at a crossroads when it comes to whether he wants to pursue writing or fashion. Rather, Ghanem believes he resides in “a sweet spot in the middle.” “I don’t want to be a fashion writer,” he said. “I am a writer, influenced strongly by fashion.”
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