MOMENTUM | In Conversation with Sara Jghab on Casablanca, interior design, and creating spaces you can feel.

Camille Beaulieu: Where does your story start?

Sara Jghab: Casablanca. That’s where I was born, and honestly, it’s where everything I know about beauty comes from.

C: Your path wasn’t easy. Can you talk about that?

S: Nothing about it was easy. I had to go against the way I was raised and start my story over, again and again. Every time I had to start over, design was the one thing I never let go of. When my life felt out of place, I made the space around me feel right. I still do.

C: Who taught you the most about design?

S: The souks of Morocco. People ask me which school or which designer, but my biggest teachers were the artisans. These are people who spend their whole lives mastering one skill: carving wood, weaving, working with brass, laying tiles by hand. They don’t rush anything. I grew up watching them, and that patience and respect for the craft is in everything I do.

C: What role does your heritage play in your work?

S: A huge one. My heritage is what gives my work its flavour. It’s the part of me nobody can copy. When I put something together, you can feel where I come from, even in a very modern space. My heritage and my life story are what make my work mine.

C: Which designers inspire you?

S: Le Corbusier. I love him so much. The way he thought about how people actually live in a space, the proportions, the light... he understood that a home is for a human being first. And I love Kelly Wearstler. She’s fearless. She mixes things nobody else would put together, and somehow it always feels right.

C: And outside of design?

S: Painting. I love Jean-Michel Basquiat and Warhol. Basquiat for the rawness, the emotion, the way he wasn’t afraid to put everything on the canvas. Warhol for the way he made everyday things iconic. Both of them taught me that you can be bold and still be very intentional.

C: What else feeds your taste?

S: Everything. Cinema, fashion, music, tech, food. I’ve always been curious about all of it, and it all ends up somewhere in my work. A film scene can give me a colour palette. A dinner can give me the mood for a dining room.

C: How would you describe yourself?

S: I’m sensitive to a lot of things in life. I notice everything: people, light, the smallest details. But I’m also a force not to be reckoned with. People are sometimes surprised that both are true.

C: What do you look at first when you start a project?

S: The people. How are they going to live here? How should it feel when they walk in? At the same time, I look at how the space works: the proportions, the flow, the rhythm. Then I write a story based on all of that, and the design follows the story.

C: What are you known for with clients?

S: Details. I’m a perfectionist, and I’m okay with that. The light, the materials, how a chair feels when you sit in it. What I wouldn’t want for myself, I wouldn’t want for your space.

C: What still amazes you?

S: Light. A room can feel like nothing, and then the sun comes in through one corner and it completely changes. I’ve never gotten over that.

C: You share cuisine, art, architecture, lifestyle and fashion. How do they connect?

S: For me it’s the same language. A beautiful plate, a painting, a building, an outfit... it all comes down to proportion, texture and feeling. I learn from one and bring it into the others.

C: Where can people see more?

S: At www.sarajghab.com, and on Instagram at @sarajghab.

Momentum is the editorial series of sarajghab.com.

Sara Jghab | interior designer