The son of Afghan parents, Osman Yousefzada was raised in post-industrial Birmingham. Osman's father was a carpenter, and his mother, to help make ends meet, took up sewing and became a seamstress. Women from Indian-East African, Israeli, Shia and Afghan communities came together in the Yousefzada household to have clothes made and mended by his mother. Osman learned the craft at her knee and became enraptured by what was deemed a woman's job, and increasingly found himself at odds with the highly patriarchal culture he grew up in.