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Sirine Hallak Appeals To Various Ages And Nationalities

When Sirine Hallak was little she used to spend days visiting fashion stores in Paris with her mother. Little surprise, then, that she grew up with a creative spark. “I would come back home and sew something for my dolls,” she says. “I was always attracted by odd, not usual things. There should be a touch of style, but it’s still odd.” What is a surprise, however, is that despite these formative experiences, and her current line of work, Hallak holds a bachelor law degree, which she obtained in Lebanon, as well as an MBA from the University of Leicester in the UK. “I’m very close to my dad, and I’m the only child [in the family] who went to university, so I really wanted to pursue his dream,” she says, while pointing out that her father is a strong inspiration for her as a person, as he “did a lot of things out of nothing.” She explains: “He always says that if you don’t do a business yourself, it will never reach the place where you want it to be. If you want to reach your vision, you have to do it yourself.” With this, she reveals the roots of her business acumen that has led her to establish Zona Trading L.L.C., an umbrella company for two outlets in the Wafi Mall – Zona and Iris Ver. Some years later on, she is now many things – a happily married mother of two, a successful businesswoman, a personal fashion and interior designer, and an open supporter of new artists – but one thing has remained constant: her sense of her own difference from the bulk of other people. “It’s something that always comes out – no matter how much you are trying to keep it inside, it comes out,” she says, explaining that even during the time when she worked as a language teacher, which was her first job in Dubai, people used to recognise her creativity. At that time, this creativity was expressed through her designs of the school’s yearbooks, gifts for students and similar. Although she was designing fashion items only for her friends and herself, it was the move from Lebanon to Dubai that encouraged her take a bold step and present her work to the wider world. She says: “I didn’t have a niche until I came here. People started stopping me in the street – it was really a massive attraction. “At one moment, people around me were all wearing the same style. It was that inspiring. And one day my husband just told me “Let’s do it as a business!”“We started with a small business at Global Village in 2002, where I presented abayas with a lot of 3D accessories, which were not really in fashion [at that time], or with Arabic rings all over them, or made of Indian fabrics. “Mixing this with the Arabic culture – people were really not used to see these things as [they are] now. It was very odd.” She explains that the profit after just one month was such that they decided to repeat it all during the following five years: “All the profit we got, we would make the business bigger by buying more accessories, but it wasn’t really enough to open a big business. “At that time I was doing it all by myself, at home. I couldn’t afford to have a tailor or a factory. It went on like that for five years.” She declined a few joint venture offers during these years because she wanted to start her own business, which materialised in 2007 when, with the support of her brother in law, she established Zona Trading L.L.C.“I’m the owner, the designer, and the head of production,” she says. “In fact, we have two divisions – we have one retail section, which includes Zona and Iris Ver stores in Wafi Mall, and one wholesale and corporate section, which is focused on the design of uniforms for the hospitality industry, F&B, and schools, as well as interior design. “I never expected that I will be known, and that I will have the business that I’m doing now, especially in the corporate side – people really know that this company has a good designer. “We provide high quality uniforms, and we have integrated a lot of different ideas in their designs, not a lot of uniform companies can provide this variety and creativity.”

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