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Guide >Lebanese Designers >

Missak Hajiavedikian

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  • Lebanese designers
  • fashion design

Missak HajiAvedikian was born in Beirut in1983. His father was a sewing machine engineer, while his mother was a dressmaker. He therefore grew up with the sound of sewing machines and has enjoyed the softness of textiles and the beauty of colours since his young years. Very fast, he started taking hold of abandoned fabrics to create dresses for his sisters on the sly. He soon realized that he loves it: he looks for the perfection in the fabric, the cut, the colour, and decides to devote his life to the love of the cloth.

Missak starts studying fashion design between 2005 and 2007 at Esmod Beirut, one of the most prestigious recognized international schools. He completes his studies with several rewards. The young fashion designer looks for inspiration abroad, and travels to Milan, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. He discovers new places, new stories and new ways to wear the cloth, or simply live the fashion. He returns from his trip well inspired. Missak the artist is now born and feels ready to create. Missak draws his inspirations from his Armenian origins and in cinema. He has always been fascinated by fairytales, grandiose theatrical productions and auteur films; these have become a part of his fashion world, where he constructs the ‘Ideal Beauty’ with bits of his personal fetishes.

Missak’s first collection, “Fractures in Light”, is based on a short movie by the artist Lena Yeretzian, dedicated to the famous film director Serguei Paradjanov. While working on this project, he matures and expresses his deepest feelings, and reveals all his artistic energy. His collection recounts the stages of a woman’s life from childhood, to adolescence, to marriage. This theatrical collection uses white and transparent fabrics to dress fascinating and fragile women, like fairytale characters. He also realises how fashion was the language with which he could exteriorise his inner feelings; “This collection was a realization of all the accumulated artistic stamina that was dormant inside of me”.

Missak is then selected to take part in the Maison Rabih Kayrouz project, and presents his ready-to-wear creations in Mzaar during the famous Fashion Show. His 2008 summer collection “Gorky, The Artist and his Mother,” related to the name of the Armenian-born American artist Arshile Gorky, finds great success and is sold in the prestigious boutique Starch for Rabih Kayrouz in Beirut. In summer 2009, Missak presents a new collection called “Trchun”, meaning a bird in Armenian. This ready-to-wear collection acquired great success and was displayed in the Starch boutique. Following the great success of Starch, Missak launches his creations as an independent designer at Residence de Linda Sursock on December 2009, with his winter ready-to-wear collection under the name “The Boy with the Fruit Basket”.

Today, Missaks’ designs are worn by some Lebanese and Middle Eastern celebrities, and have started reaching the covers of magazines. In parallel with his projects and collections, he started teaching fashion at ESMOD Beirut in 2010.

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