ABOUT CHAVAH

I'm Chavah Lindsay, a Canadian womenswear designer and the founder of CHAVAH.

Fashion gave me a voice long before I knew it would become my career. Growing up, there wasn't a lot of extra money for clothes. I was the kid who was painfully aware that what I had wasn't always what everyone else had. My mom taught me to see things differently. We repurposed clothes, changed them and made them my own. Instead of trying to fit in, I started figuring out how I wanted to stand out. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with fashion. By Grade 11, I knew I wanted more of it. My mom pulled together what she could and put me on a Greyhound bus to Toronto for a summer fashion program. I loved it.

I went on to study Fashion Design and Fine Art at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design, followed by Fashion Marketing at Humber College.

Years later, what I started from home grew into a brick-and-mortar studio with employees, clients and classes.

From the outside, it looked like success. For a while, I thought it was too.

But the bigger the business became, the less time I spent being a designer. Eventually, I made the difficult decision to close the doors and start again.

Right where I began: at home. Only this time, I knew what I wanted to build.

Since then, my work has appeared on runways throughout Atlantic Canada and Toronto, been featured in national media, and represented New Brunswick in the Cashmere Collection three times, in 2019, 2024 and 2025, taking the national win in 2024.

Today, CHAVAH is about storytelling through clothing. I'm drawn to femininity with strength, softness with structure, and creating pieces that feel beautiful without being forgettable.

And I don't only share the polished parts. There are wins here. There are experiments. There are things that don't work at all.

Because I think they all belong in the story.