You learn how strong you are when you have no other choice but to be strong. Even though I was young, I learned that I have thick skin and will do anything to reach my goals. Nothing was given to me anymore; I had to work for it, and I worked hard. Sometimes you have to do things you’ve never done before, but the outcome makes the struggle worth it. You’ll be amazed at how capable you are when you take risks.
I’m loquacious, and somehow I always get what I want. The “getting what I want” part was a lot easier when I was younger. Nowadays, it requires much more than just charming adults. I always negotiated my grades with teachers. In the Iranian educational system, grades were marked out of twenty, and I always managed to get a perfect mark. The art of persuasion really came in handy. If I felt something wasn’t fair, I voiced my opinion. It didn’t matter if it pertained to me or to someone else.
My parents were convinced that I was going to become a lawyer because of my strong character. And even though I spent most of my time reading fashion magazines, not legal books, I still wanted to have the ability to bring justice where justice was due. Maman made business cards when I was twelve years old that said “Tala Raassi, Attorney at Law.” She put them in a cardholder on my desk. At least I felt important when I did my homework. But entering the legal profession especially appealed to me when I met Baba’s lawyer.
Baba was an overly serious man. He was the oldest among his siblings, and the wealthiest, so everyone respected and feared him at the same time. His lawyer was a woman, and Baba actually listened to her. Seeing a woman with that commanding power really provoked me. There was something very influential about it, and I envied her. I wanted to have her superpowers, but when I daydreamed about my career in the justice system, I would find myself daydreaming more about the fashionable suits and outfits I would wear, instead of the courtroom. That should have been a clue.
If I really think about it, my designing destiny began with Barbies when I was eight years old. Even though children around the world have been playing with Barbies since the 1960s, they had become illegal in Iran after the 1979 Revolution. The government viewed them as a symbol of Western materialism and destructive to the country’s social and cultural values, and it banned them. As a result, store owners were forced to unlawfully stash them in the back of their stores, and customers could only buy them upon request. Their selection was always outdated, so I waited for opportunities to purchase them abroad or receive them as gifts when my family visited from overseas. I also never seemed to have enough clothes for my Barbies. And who wants to wait for the latest styles when you can make them yourself? I know I didn’t. I was way too impatient.
Maman owned a gorgeous, long black mink coat that she never seemed to wear. I didn’t know why at the time, but now I realize that she must not have felt comfortable wearing it in public after the Revolution. It risked drawing too much attention. One day, I decided that Maman’s mink would make a wonderful new outfit for my favorite blond Malibu Barbie. She came with a one-piece pink ruffled swimsuit, and I wished to make her a coat so she wouldn’t catch a cold. I thought Maman would appreciate sharing her fur. I cut about eight inches off the bottom to sew the coat together with Maman’s needle and thread. I had no idea what the value of fur was at the time. I thought it was just a random piece of clothing that was in storage and had no worth.
I spent hours sitting on my bedroom floor assembling my masterpiece. My fingertips were bloody from all the sharp needle pricks. Even though one sleeve was longer than the other, and the coat turned out only big enough to cover Barbie’s shoulders, I was still pumped about the glamour I had crafted. I couldn’t wait to present my ill-fitted tiny fur to Maman. When I heard her car pull into the garage, I sprinted down the stairs from the third floor, Barbie in hand, as fast as I could.
“Maman…Maman!” I screamed. She got out of the car and froze, a shaken look on her face. I thought someone had died and she was about to deliver the bad news. The next thing I knew, I was greeted with a slap to my cheek followed by yelling and screaming. Suddenly my glamour was anything but glamorous.
I think Maman considered killing me that day. I learned that the coat had been handed down to her from her mother, who passed away in a car accident at a very young age. It was one of her most precious memories of her mother that she held onto with love.
I was dragged by my arm up to my room and grounded. Eventually, Maman came around and actually helped me fix the Barbie’s fur coat since sewing wasn’t my forte. As Maman lectured me about how wrong I had been for ruining her coat, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from her talented fingers sticking the needle in and out of the fur. I felt like the little coat was getting a professional do-over from an expert. My mother could sew anything. She even made her own engagement dress—an elegant, long, form-fitting red dress with a long train. You could easily see this Saint Laurent-type gown on a celebrity walking the red carpet today. She made clothing, curtains, and other household items, so her materials, patterns, sewing machine, and fashion and home decor magazines were always left around the house. I observed her sewing from a very young age.
Dreaming up and making that fur coat truly sparked my desire to create. I didn’t know anything at that young age about being a fashion designer or what it actually entailed. As a child growing up in Iran, I never watched fashion shows on TV. Mainstream designer boutiques didn’t exist back then, and women in the streets were always covered. Also, Iranian schools only prepared students for “traditional” careers. When you’re raised in a place where independence and individuality aren’t really options, your dreams become limited.
My first introduction to the fashion industry was, surprisingly, from my father. One of Baba’s biggest business ventures when I was growing up was an awesome leather factory. He exported high-quality Iranian leather out of the country and imported Italian leather to Iran. He then manufactured all sorts of leather goods from it. Maman and I often visited Baba at the factory. I always looked forward to seeing which new project he was working on next.
The manufacturing area was where the magic happened and the place where I begged to spend most of my time. It was filled with workers cutting and sewing the leather into beautiful handbags and suitcases. I played with razor-sharp cutters and cut leftover leather into my own version of art. Of course, Baba always yelled at me and kicked me out of this “dangerous area.” At those times when Baba wouldn’t allow me in the production area, I would spend my hours sitting behind his desk, pretending to answer phone calls in my school uniform. I wanted to be a businessperson just like him. I envied the independence he had to create things that he wanted. He was producing things that he wished existed on his own terms, and I found a brilliant magic in that combination.
One afternoon, Maman and I visited the factory together. She brought Baba sweets and insisted that I go with her. She enticed me by saying that Baba had a surprise for me: he had a new handbag line for me to salivate over! His bag of tricks seemed endless. I waited in the cutting room to catch a glimpse of his masterpiece—the purse that would grace my shoulders for years to come. The workers sat at their workstations meticulously sewing the pieces of leather together. I monitored the factory worker, cigarette perched between his lips, as he cut and flipped the leather around using all sorts of strange and cool tools. His companion would then glue the pieces together. The smell of the glue combined with leather was exotic and invigorating to my curious nose. One piece at a time, it was all coming together.
I fell in love with the small, black clutch made out of Italian leather with a striking gold buckle on the side. With a thin, removable strap, it doubled as a shoulder bag. This would be the bag with the Quran in the side pocket that I wore when I was arrested at my sixteenth birthday celebration. Who knew something so ordinary and unassuming would become part of my forthcoming drama.
I left the factory with five purses in hand—one in each color. Obviously, one of anything in fashion is never enough. I carried all of them out of the factory myself because I didn’t want to let them out of my sight. Baba ended up calling the style “Tala” for all their trade shows in the region because he knew how much I loved that bag. Maman tells me that my current fashion career makes sense because I’m “following in Baba’s footsteps.”
A few months after the fur coat incident, I found myself home alone with Ehteram Khanoom when an idea dawned on me—my fashionable city girl Barbie needed a leather skirt. I had seen a striking leather skirt on a model in one of Maman’s fashion magazines, and Baba’s imported leather chairs were the perfect material for it. They were his favorite, and he could often be seen reclining on the one by the window reading the newspaper. I guess I hadn’t learned my lesson after all. I found a cutter from Baba’s factory in one of the kitchen drawers and tiptoed to the chair, so Ehteram wouldn’t catch me. I carefully cut a small piece from the side—could I be the next Karl Lagerfeld prodigy?
I bolted the second I heard Ehteram Khanoom approaching the living room. Her voice was panicked as she shouted, “Ay Khoda, ay Khoda!” (Oh my God, oh my God!). I immediately hid—not because I was ashamed about what I had done, but because I didn’t want to get caught. In my head, no one was going to notice the missing piece from the side.
Baba gave me a good, fatherly slapping around later that day. Then he dragged me to my grandmother’s house as Maman pleaded with him to stop. Aria couldn’t even defend me anymore. At this point, he just didn’t know how to help. I was always getting in trouble with one of my parents for the stupid stuff I would pull. But, of course, I was angry with my father for years for doing this, which I believed was a cruel and undeserved punishment.
Baba ended up gluing the piece of leather back to the chair, but it never looked the same. But what I was most disappointed about was the fact that Barbie never got her cool leather skirt.
A few years later, as I entered my teenage years, my sole focus was to look fabulous at parties. My family was still struggling financially, so my first option was to attend these parties in outdated clothing, and my second option was to find a way to get the trendiest fashions. It was a no-brainer. But I could no longer ask my parents for money and throw tantrums. The thought of poverty was always at the back of my mind, and I learned from a young age that I couldn’t rely on anyone for money. In order to maintain the lifestyle I’d had growing up, I had to work hard on my own. But I was only thirteen years old, so getting a job in Iran was out of the question. I chose a third option and did the only thing I knew how to do well—create. If Baba wasn’t going to get his life back in order, I was going to construct my own.
Back then braided friendship bracelets were the “it” thing to wear. As teenage girls we used them to accessorize our school uniforms; we would make wishes and promises to each other and tie them on our wrists. At any given time I wore a dozen of them. Clearly, I had way too many wishes. I made them in every style and color you could imagine, and I was good at it too! What better way to make money than doing something that you love? I turned my hobby into a small business and started charging girls at school for the bracelets. I also created beaded necklaces and other jewelry with fishing line for my edgier and fancier styles. Some of these items required thousands and thousands of tiny little beads that I had to pull through the strings, one by one. But I was determined!
My shopping sprees in the heart of northern Tehran’s Tajrish district were escapes offering an endless supply of treasures to discover. Nuts, fruits, gold, shoes, clothes, makeup, painted birds, live fish—you name it, they had it. But I was not to be distracted. I had one mission and one mission only at the bazaar: to hunt for material. It was my liberation. Then, when I finally made it home with bags of beads, stones, sequins, and other goodies, I would execute my designs until my eyes grew too heavy, like the sands of time, to stay awake. Slowly, my craft became more refined.
Iranian girls are generally very creative. Whether my friends were rich or not, they were all doing their own pop-up shops. Some made candles and cakes, while others created holiday cards and hand-painted T-shirts. Our trunk shows became a hobby we had fun with, but for me, they were much more. I needed the money!
Luckily, my creations were selling fast. At first I sold them to my friends, and over time everyone in high school wanted one. People hosted parties to sell my products, and organizing house parties to sell our merchandise became a trend among my friends. It was a way for us to make money, and a reason to host parties. We were lighting two candles with one flame! Every week my friends and I would make a list of the invitees, which usually consisted of our friends and the boys we wanted to see. But there were also times when we invited our parents, knowing that they would buy our merchandise to support us. Guilt-tripping them into buying products was my operation.
The money didn’t go directly into my piggy bank, but toward the next hot item I was eyeing. It felt good making enough money to finally buy all the merchandise I wanted. Believe it or not, I made enough to shop at nice boutiques around town.
Those were my formative years, when fashion never seemed to escape my mind. Maman had a bookshelf in the library room filled with American fashion magazines. Every day after school, I examined and pretended to read them. I couldn’t read English, but I pored over the pages and visualized myself in the outfits. Of course, they were much simpler and more conservative then, as the magazines were from the early eighties and nineties. This made them perfect for any fashionable attorney, but by now my passion for creating and designing had really started to blossom. I wondered if my parents could ever consider this a possible career choice for me. Whenever I brought up fashion, Baba would always say, “You might as well become a tailor.”
My creative juices started flowing from a very young age, and no one could stop them. When something comes so innately from within you, it’s hard to subdue it from radiating out of you. Follow what you love, and take the slapping, because some people aren’t lucky enough to feel that kind of fire.