Osman Yousefzada on Private Passions with Michael Berkeley 1st May 2022

The fashion designer and artist Osman Yousefzada tells Michael Berkeley about his childhood in a strictly religious Pashtun community in Birmingham.

Osman Yousefzada shot to fame when Beyoncé wore one of his designs to the 2013 Grammy Awards. Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton and Taylor Swift are among his many other celebrity clients. He is also an acclaimed artist, curator and film-maker, and the creator of one of the world’s largest ever pieces of public art: the ‘wrapping’ of the Selfridges building in Birmingham in geometric patterns inspired by Islamic art.

Educated at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Central St Martins and Cambridge University, Osman grew up in a community described by the Daily Mail as ‘the Jihadi capital of Britain’. His newly published memoir, The Go Between, is a fascinating account of his childhood and his first steps into the outside world while navigating both racism and family expectations.

He tells Michael Berkeley about his beloved mother, a talented seamstress who inspired him as a designer: she was married at 14, had her first child at 15 and lived most of her life in Birmingham, but remained illiterate and never learned to speak English. She hardly ever left the house. Osman’s sisters were taken out of school at the age of 11 and also shut away inside the family home.

Osman chooses music inspired by the Sufi tradition of Islamic mysticism by Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and a song by the Grammy-winning Pakistani-American Arooj Aftab, as well as pieces by Philip Glass and by the Canadian composer and cellist Zoe Keating.

Producer: Jane Greenwood

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3