< Previous90 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 his is one of the reasons why I love living in Venice Beach,” says Behnaz Farahi, while carrying a surfboard on an early Monday morning. Walking past rows of restored Craftsman cottages, she makes her way to the nearby beach, where she begins each day surfi ng. “It’s a way for me to connect with nature,” adds the Iranian-American designer and creative technologist, who works at the intersection of fashion, architecture and interactive design. “It’s not easy explaining to people what I do, because it’s about exploring the potential of interactive environments and their relationship to the movement of the human body,” says the designer, who was born into a family of academics in Tehran, where she studied for a BA and Masters in Architecture at Shahid Beheshti University. She later pursued a second master’s degree in architecture at the University of Southern California, where she’s currently an Annenberg Fellow and PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Media Arts and Practice at the School of Cinematic Arts. “I spent several years as an architect and never thought I’d want to do anything else,” says Behnaz, recalling the day she found herself mesmerised by a group of children playing with an interactive fountain in a park. “I couldn’t get over how much fun these kids were having and a light bulb went off in my head. It got me thinking about the future of public spaces and design in general,” adds the architect, who began exploring interactive technologies. “We live at a time when the lines between the sciences and other creative fi elds are blurring,” she says, noting that people were once expected to lean to either their right (logical) or left (intuitive) brains to determine their career path. “Perhaps those two sides of us have always been one and the same, but the tools didn’t exist for us to fully embrace that notion. Today, what I fi nd interesting is exploring ways to combine design and interactive technologies to come up with new scenarios and functions for objects that could enhance the way we live our lives,” says Behnaz the next day, while walking through USC’s sprawling campus towards the School of Cinematic Arts, one of the most prestigious and cutting edge institutions in the country. It’s within this creative environment that Behnaz works on innovative projects that have garnered her several high-profi le awards, including the 2016 World Technology Design Award and a Rock Hudson Fellowship. Opening the door to her studio, she reveals a world populated by techno-fabrics, 3D printers and depth-sensing cameras. “My goal is to enhance the relationship between human beings and their environment by exploring examples already found in nature,” says the designer, who also co-teaches and conducts workshops on topics that include 3D printing and wearable technologies. Since 2015, she’s worked on several fashion-based projects that explore the concept of body architecture and second skins. She picks up one of her more recent works, 2017’s Bodyscape, a poncho- like garment with a surface reminiscent of a sea urchin. It incorporates miniscule LED lights that illuminate with the fl ow of the wearer’s movements. “After Bodyscape, I wanted to push these materials to the edge of what they could do with other mediums,” she explains, while pointing to Opale, a custom garment entirely covered with translucent fi ber optics embedded in silicon. This other-worldly creation comes equipped with a tiny camera that detects anger or surprise in the wearer’s face, causing the fi bers to bristle, droop or stand on end in response. “I was inspired by this involuntary action in animals that causes muscles and skin to set fur, feathers, quills and scales in motion as a reaction to their environment,” says Behnaz, who readily admits that her work can sometimes be seen as speculative. “There are instances where I’m questioned about the purpose of such projects by people who may not immediately understand the benefi ts of wearable technology. Like other research fi elds this is the early work that needs to happen, which eventually leads to new innovations that will impact our daily lives,” she says, noting that clothing is one of the most signifi cant layers between our bodies and the environment, one which also defi nes who we are. “Imagine the possibility of smart materials that refl ect a person’s emotions, allowing us to shift our interactions with them in a way that fosters empathy? One day it may even be normal for sportswear to have built-in sensors that detect ones posture or the speed of your movements to improve an exercise regimen,” says Behnaz, while acknowledging the importance of encouraging young women and girls to see careers in science and technology as an opportunity to be creative and dream big. “What excites me every day is the possibility of having an idea that I can bring to reality, no matter how fantastical it is,” says the designer, who will unveil her latest project at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry this month. Designer, Architect & Creative Technologist BE H N A Z FA R A H I “ W H A T E X C I T E S M E I S T H E P O S S IB IL I T Y O F H A V I N G A N I D E A T H A T I C A N B R I N G T O RE A L I T Y ” Behn a z F a ra hi “T The designer walking past a restored bungalow ➤CREDIT HERE 91 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 Behnaz fuses her love of technology and design to create the garments of the future The TALKING POINTCREDIT HERE 92 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 The TALKING POINT In 2018, Azniv Korkejian released her critically acclaimed folk album, Bedouine93 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 his is the longest I’ve ever lived in one place as an adult,” says Azniv Korkejian, while walking along Echo Park Lake with her German shepherd, Hans, trailing behind her. Once home to a thriving Mexican-American community, the low- key neighbourhood also gave birth to the earliest silent fi lm studios along Glendale Boulevard. Today, Echo Park has the feel of Williamsburg with its independent cafes, colourful murals and Victorian homes lining Carroll Avenue. “I love this area because it’s walkable and has a small town feel,” says Azniv, the Syrian-Armenian-American singer, who also discovered a close- knit community of artists, writers and musicians. An hour later she enters Stories Books & Café, a local institution that’s been selling and trading books since 2008. She makes her way to the bookstore’s back patio, where its café serves fairtrade coffee and locally baked goods. “I never thought having a career in music was feasible, until I moved here and met people who were not only making a decent living from it, but also encouraging each other to grow and improve their craft,” says the songwriter, whose family is part of the Armenian diaspora that settled in Syria between 1914 and 1923. “My mom and dad were born in Aleppo and grew up there,” says Azniv of her parents, who returned to the city to give birth to her after they’d moved to Riyadh for work. She would spend the fi rst three months of her life in Aleppo before returning to Saudi Arabia with her parents and two older brothers. “My dad managed an American compound in Riyadh that was a self-contained village. I also attended an American school and even went trick-or-treating during Halloween,” recalls the songwriter, who visited her relatives in Syria twice a year with her family. Today she still cherishes vivid memories of Aleppo, when her extended family would converge on her paternal grandmother’s house, which she last visited in 2009 before the outbreak of war. During those trips, she would also accompany her mother to Beirut to visit her maternal grandmother in the Armenian neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud. At the age of 10 her family won the green card lottery and moved to the United States in 1995. They settled on the outskirts of Boston for a year, where she saw snow for the fi rst time. “I felt connected to Saudi Arabia while growing up, so it was a somewhat confusing period in my life. I went from a sheltered environment with clear borders, to one where I couldn’t tell where neighbourhoods began and ended because there weren’t any walls around us,” says Azniv, whose family eventually moved to the warmer suburbs of Houston. After graduating from high school in 2003, she went to college in LA and Austen, where she initially majored in English. One day, while staying at a friend’s horse farm in the rolling hills of Lexington, Kentucky, she was searching online when she came across the sound design department at The Savannah College of Art and Design. “I knew I wanted to integrate my love of music into a sustainable career and it seemed like a good option,” says the songwriter, who attended an orientation at SCAD, where the chair of the department gave her a tour and recommended she apply for a scholarship. In 2008, she moved to Georgia to study post-production sound design for fi lms and television at the school. Shortly after graduating in 2011, she set off for LA where she’d landed an internship that would turn into a full-time job editing dialogue and music in Hollywood. A few years after leaving the company to establish her freelance career, she landed her fi rst big fi lm credit, editing the sound for the 2017 indie hit, The Big Sick. “Even though it was a low-budget fi lm, I had a feeling it was going to be something very special,” notes Azniv, who was also writing music at the time, which she performed at clubs in central LA. Moved by Sibylle Baier’s Colour Green, a lost folk album self-made on reel-to-reel tapes in the early ’70s, Azniv was determined to record her fi rst album using a similar technique. While searching for a reel-to-reel tape machine, she approached Gus Seyffert, a friend and music producer who worked with Beck and Norah Jones. They would end up recording a collection of 10 exquisite and intimate folk songs that formed her fi rst album, Bedouine, named in reference to her nomadic life, as well as that of the Armenian diaspora. At the end of her song Summer Cold, Azniv recreated the sounds of her grandmother’s street in Aleppo. Amidst the noise of busy traffi c and storefronts rolling up their metal gates, she layered the clicks and clacks of donkey hooves, dice falling on a backgammon board, and the clinking of tea cups against saucers. “Aleppo was our home base and a beautiful vibrant city where we would go to see family. It bothered me that I couldn’t go back and have those experiences again. A lot of my extended family have since resettled in Armenia, so recreating those sounds was a kind of therapy for me,” says Azniv, who also explores the diffi cult decision of leaving one’s home in Louise, a song she sings in Armenian. Through the language, she was able to refl ect on a personal story that speaks to a larger issue. “I was thinking a lot about my family members who decided to stay in Syria during the war and those who left. I asked my parents why would they stay? Shouldn’t they leave at all costs?” says the songwriter, who realised the answers to her questions were far more complex. “The more I thought about it, the more I sympathised with their position and how diffi cult it must be to start over again and leave everything behind,” she adds of the song, which is ultimately about trusting one’s own decisions in spite of what others may say or think. The past year has also found her touring the US, Canada and Europe. “It still feels very surreal to think that I can travel the world to do what I love, and I want to continue writing songs that speak to our shared experiences and truths,” says the songwriter, who will release her second album in the spring. Singer and Songwriter AZ N IV KO R K E J I A N “ A L E P P O W A S O U R HOM E B A SE A N D A B E A U T I F U L , VI B R A N T C I T Y ” Az n i v K o r k e j i a n “T Azniv with her German shepherd, Hans ➤CREDIT HERE 94 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 The TALKING POINT Melody Ehsani combines her passion for social justice with her love of designDesigner ME L O DY E H S A N I typically carve out time to meditate or catch up on reading when I wake up early each morning,” says Melody Ehsani, over cups of tea at her home in the Silver Lake neighborhood of LA. Walking towards a bookshelf, she scans its contents, which have long served as a source of inspiration and guidance over the years. They include works by James Baldwin, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and a translation of Hafi z’s poetry by Daniel Ladinsky. “This is the book that came into my life at a time when I was questioning a lot of things,” says the Iranian-American designer, while holding up Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, a novel about a talented architect whose vision went against tradition and the status quo. “It’s ultimately about the individual versus the collective, and how society can fear what’s different,” says Melody, who came across the book while interning in 2001 at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights in Washington DC. “It was a surreal time, because I arrived there a week after September 11th. I was an undergrad at UCLA and trying to decide whether to pursue a law degree because I was passionate about social justice,” says the designer, who realised soon after her internship, that the practice of law wasn’t the career path she wanted to take. It was also a time in her life when she faced pressure from both family and community to marry and have children. “In many cultures, there’s the pressure to conform to certain career choices, such as law or medicine, which are considered safe yet can also be limiting. I also couldn’t understand why a woman’s value had to be attached to whom she marries and the number of children she has. The thought of making major life decisions based on what others think is right for you or how a community will judge you, didn’t sit well with me,” says Melody, who graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s in philosophy and sociology. It was while taking a year off that she realised there were other ways to pursue her passion for social justice. Growing up in an Iranian family, also allowed her to tap into spiritual practices that helped her along the way. “Self-care is very important to me, which is why I take time to meditate each day. It helps in cultivating self-awareness and becoming intuitive enough to make better decisions. It’s also a practice that centres me and puts things into perspective,” Melody says, of how she reached the decision to pursue a career in design. While researching product design, she came across the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena and enrolled in its program. Shortly after graduating, she landed an internship with the sneaker company, Creative Recreation, which lead to launching her own line of shoes in 2007. “It was a big learning experience for me, as I refi ned my vision and what I wanted to say through my brand,” notes the designer, who moved to Guangzhou, China, for six months to work with a factory. Three years later, her career would take an unexpected turn when her entire shipment of shoes was seized at US Customs, which required a large sum of money to be released. She shifted her focus instead to designing jewellery made from materials such as laser-cut acrylic and gold-plated metals. Initially working out of her studio apartment, she began selling on social media platforms and her business soon grew through word of mouth. Her rings caught the eye of Erykah Badu, who tapped Melody to design a dozen pieces of jewellery, one of which appeared on the cover of the singer’s 2008 album. By the time she’d opened her store on North Fairfax Avenue four years later, she’d already established a client base that included Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Solange. Although she was the only woman- owned brand on a street populated by male-centered street wear labels, she transformed her store into a space where female skateboarders and girls from the local high school could hang out. “One of the reasons I opened my store was to create a space where young women can feel empowered,” says Melody, who was the fi rst female designer to have a multi-year collaboration with Reebok from 2012-2017. Later in the afternoon, she stops by her store where clean white walls provide a backdrop for a rotating selection of artworks such as a large photograph of a famous New York women’s march from the 1970s. The jewellery, apparel and accessories on display feature phrases such as ‘You are not your history’ and ‘Stop waiting to be who you already are.’ Despite her celebrity following, the designer insists on keeping her pieces reasonably priced, with a portion of proceeds from sales going to charities that support the advancement and education of women of colour. She also regularly hosts free talks and performances at her store featuring dynamic women such as Serena Williams, Lauryn Hill and Lena Waithe. “For me activism is about using whatever is at your disposal to make your voice heard. Knowing I have the opportunity to do that is what motivates me to work even harder.” “I O P E N E D M Y S T O R E T O C R E A T E A S P A C E W H E R E Y O U N G W O M E N C A N F EEL EMP O W ER ED ” Me l o d y E h s a n i “I 95 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 Melody at her LA store, which serves as a community space that empowers women ➤96 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 The TALKING POINT Founder and Director of Advocartsy ROS H I RA H N A M A ove is the bridge between you and everything,” says Roshi Rahnama, while quoting Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet, scholar and Sufi mystic. It’s an apt statement for the founder and director of Advocartsy, an organisation dedicated to bridging cultural divides through the artists of the Iranian diaspora, who are exploring ideas of identity that ultimately brings the conversation back to Rumi. “As a child of the diaspora and an Iranian-American, ones identity is formed through a constant process of negotiation. In my case, what grounds me are the teachings of Persian poets and philosophers, such as Hafi z and Rumi,” says the Tehran-born former lawyer, who vividly recalls the day she left Iran with her parents and brother on January 16, 1979. “I was 11 years old and I remember boarding the plane, where a copy of the local newspaper, Kayhan, had been placed on each seat, with the headline announcing the Shah had left Iran that day,” says Roshi, noting that although she was too young to fully comprehend that moment in time, it was nevertheless seared into her memory. “The irony is that this particular newspaper headline has surfaced in a number of contemporary artworks over the years, because it came to encapsulate a period in history,” adds the arts advocate, who settled with her family in the suburb of Westlake Village, 30 miles from LA. Her exposure to art came the day her 11th grade teacher took her class to visit the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. “I was completely taken by this magical place. When I told my dad I was considering applying to art school, he advised me to pursue it as a hobby,” she says, while walking amongst thought-provoking artwork on display at The Space, her organisation’s gallery, which acts as an incubator for Iranian artists based in LA, as well as the larger diaspora. Located along a stretch of San Pedro Street in downtown LA, its very location is meant to shake up the local art scene by providing a space where the immigrant and the silenced can be heard. “It was important to create a venue that’s not only welcoming and engaging, but also catches people off guard the moment they walk in,” says Roshi of the gallery, that’s not far from LA’s ever-expanding arts district. “What called me into action to establish Advocartsy in January 2015, was the need to connect the Iranian contemporary art scene to LA’s network of arts organisations, museums, foundations and collectors,” she says, while adding that Advocartsy is also focused on educating the larger public through art. “Particularly in the climate we live in today, it’s an opportunity to communicate in meaningful ways because art disarms and transcends borders,” says Roshi, who decided to launch her organisation with Art Brief, a series of pop-up exhibitions, the fourth iteration of which took place in San Francisco. Since its launch, the Art Brief series has had a measurable impact on the arts scene, as well as LA’s museum world. “A number of works showcased in our exhibitions have since been acquired by LACMA as part of their permanent collection,” says Roshi, who majored in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of California in LA. “UCLA is where I reconnected with my Persian identity, because I was meeting so many young Iranians on campus,” she recalls of the university, where she served as the vice president of the Iranian Student Group, an experience that nurtured within her a desire to serve her community. She went on to pursue a law degree at LA’s Loyola Marymount University and joined a law fi rm shortly after graduating in 1992. “Advocating for others has always come naturally to me, as it’s one way to foster substantive change,” says Roshi, who was involved in several organisations such as the California Lawyers for the Arts as well as the LA chapter of the Iranian American Lawyers Association, where she served as its president in 2015. Although she’d practiced law for 24 years, her fi rst encounter with the world of art as an 11th-grader had stayed with her. “By the time I’d had my fi rst child, I was beginning to explore ways of combining my advocacy work with my love of contemporary art,” says the former lawyer, who credits strong female mentors with guiding her throughout her career move. They include the late Massoumeh Seyhoun, who founded her infl uential Tehran art gallery in 1966. “She helped establish Tehran’s gallery system at a time when there were very few venues to show this kind of work,” notes Roshi, who joined the board of the LA-based Farhang Foundation, which was established in 2008 to promote and celebrate Iranian arts and culture. It was there that she met another important mentor, the late Anousheh Razi, who co-founded the foundation with her husband Ali. “I’m lucky to have had these inspiring role models, who encouraged me each step of the way,” notes the arts advocate, who went on to become one of the founding members and the chair of the Farhang’s Fine Arts Council. “I learnt a lot of lessons during that period, which I still use today in my work with Advocartsy,” says Roshi, who is preparing a major retrospective on the LA-based analogue photographer Hadi Salehi, for which she’s also producing a fi lm about the artist. Such projects, refl ect her organisation’s ongoing mission to create talks, publications and screenings around exhibitions, in order to engage diverse audiences. “Prejudice can’t be overcome through isolation, particularly in a world where we need to encourage more opportunities for positive exchange. That’s the end goal for me and I hope to carry on this work for many years to come.” “L “A R T D I S A R M S AN D T R AN S C E N D S BO R D E R S” Ro sh i Ra hn am a The lawyer-turned-arts advocate, Roshi Rahmana, at her gallery space in downtown LA ■CREDIT HERE 97 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 The TALKING POINT Advocarsty’s founder uses the platform to bridge cultural divides The TALKING POINT BUDDY BAR TELSEN/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY IMAGES here’s an unexpected moment towards the end of a 1988 documentary on the photographer Horst P. Horst, when Karl Lagerfeld appears just as the credits start rolling. Talking at his usual fast clip, he describes a trip to New York in the early ’80s in search of the photographer’s archives within the dusty confi nes of a publishing company’s basement. By the time he’d sat down for the interview in 1986, three years had passed since his arrival at the house of Chanel. Like most couture houses at the time, Mademoiselle had never kept an archive and Karl was on a quest to build an albeit fi ctional one in his head, from her heyday in the 1920s and ’30s. So he turned to Horst, a fellow German, who like him had infi ltrated the selective world of the Paris haute couture and settled in as an observer. With an inquisitive mind and a voracious appetite for books on art, decoration, history and philosophy, Karl was already familiar with Horst’s life and work. In the 1930s he’d photographed the society women of the day in Chanel’s creations, in addition to capturing an iconic image of the couturier lounging on an off-white Bergère armchair in her private apartment at 31 rue Cambon. That fl eeting clip in a now forgotten documentary, was telling for its insight into the inner workings of Karl’s mind. His genius lay in his ability to absorb all the lives he’d watched and read about into his dreams, and to reimagine them as entire collections. Much has been written about his aptitude for languages, shifting seamlessly between German, French, English and Italian; his appetite for collecting furniture in the style of Memphis, Louis XV, Jean- Michel Frank and Eileen Gray; as well as the underground library he built to house 250,000 volumes at his home in Biarritz. Yet, what’s much harder to pin down is the mind of a designer who didn’t defi ne one era, but several. Having participated in fashion’s metamorphosis from post-war couture dowager, to youth-quake obsessed ready-to-wear and the corporatisation of the industry, he’d seen it all and outlasted most of his contemporaries. Although he loathed nostalgia, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of fashion history, one that he effortlessly mined throughout his career to propose new collections for the many labels he designed for such as Krizia, Charles Jourdan, Chloé, Fendi and of course, Chanel. His ability to produce multiple collections over decades was down to his discipline and status within the fashion industry as a free agent. Ironically, one of his greatest accomplishments was that he’d never built a grand fashion house under his name on the scale of Saint Laurent. Instead of answering to staff and investors, he called the shots and funneled his many talents into designing and photography. But getting to that point was a journey fi lled with a cast of characters, for Karl’s other talent was a knack for assembling the right people around him at the right time. He would cross paths with the fashion world the moment he arrived in Paris from Hamburg at the age of 14 in 1952. There, under the pretext of continuing his education, he initially lived in the home of his mother’s vendeuse at Molyneux, when she frequented the couture house in the 1930s. Two years later he entered a contest sponsored by the International Wool Secretariat and won the prize for his coat design. Amongst the jurors was Pierre Balmain, who snapped up the 17-year-old and put him to work in his studio. It was in the gruelling atmosphere of the couture ateliers where Karl acquired a knowledge of dressmaking that very few designers have today. By the age of 20, Karl had become the designer at the house of Jean Patou. Within its ateliers he learned sophisticated 1920s sewing techniques from elderly fi tters and seamstresses who had learned their craft from women who’d worked in couture during the late 1800s. This is all to say that Karl’s head wasn’t only packed with references to artists and poets, but also a technical know-how that came through in his precise sketches for each dress he designed, complete with detailed notes. By the time he agreed to come to Chanel in 1983, he’d already been courted for several years by its owner, the Wertheimer family. Originally perfume manufacturers who’d invested in Mademoiselle’s iconic fragrance, No. 5, in the early 1920s, the Wertheimers convinced Chanel to reopen her house and make a remarkable comeback in 1954 with her now iconic suit. But when she died aged 87 in 1971, the house was barely staying afl oat while catering to an ageing clientele. Karl would yank it into relevancy by taking an irreverent approach to reinterpreting the house codes; so much so, that by the early 1990s there were waiting lists for Chanel suits in its boutiques across the world. Over the years he brought many talents to Chanel to get the job done. A late night visit to his studio on the eve of a couture show during the ’90s would have found him conducting fi ttings from behind a desk heaped with trays of costume jewellery, camellias and quilted bags. It’s from that vantage point that he’d direct his trusted right hand, Gilles Dufour, as well as his accessories designer, Victoire de Castellane. When models Linda Evangelista, Kristen McMenamy, Marpessa or Gisele Zelauy came out to be inspected, Paquito Sala was on hand to shorten a hem or tighten a waistline following Karl’s instructions. An expert tailor and legendary name amongst longtime couture clients, Karl had kept his eye on Monsieur Sala ever since he’d met him at Balmain in 1954. Not long after Pierre Balmain passed away in 1982, he hired the master tailor to work with him at Chanel. Like Horst before them, both men were outsiders in an insular world that was just beginning to open up. When asked about being a German designer in a very French couture establishment, Karl once noted, “I like to be a stranger wherever I go, because I like this position of detachment. I want to be nobody.” Although one could argue that he was defi nitely ‘somebody’ when he passed away at the age of 85 last month, Karl’s greatest legacy may have been his ability to build a successful career on his own terms, one that remains relevant to generations of creatives. KARL TH E IC ONO C L A S T Bazaar delves into the late designer’s legacy in search of what made him tick Words by ALEX AUBRY T K ARL LA GERFELD S/ S 1988 CHANEL HA UTE C OUTURE SPRING 1988 98 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 ■CREDIT HERE 99 HarpersBazaarArabia.com March 2019 Karl Lagerfeld, photographed in 1993Next >