Fashion designer and founder Lama Jouni walks us through her journey from fashion school and all the way to building a globally distributed brand. She discusses her collaboration with Puma and adventures at Paris Fashion Week. 

Lama grew up in Saudi Arabia and studied fashion in 3 different schools in Paris. Upon graduating, she moved back to Dubai to build and eventually scale her brand. She set up her workshop in Dubai Design District and rode the wave of Dubai's push to become a fashion epicenter. 

Her first collection earned her a trip to exhibit in London. She then went on to exhibit different collections in Paris Fashion Week. In this conversation, Lama lifts the curtains on the world of being a fashion designer, and building a brand in a hyper-competitive, and ever-evolving space and reveals the limitations of nascent ecosystems in supporting long term growth. 

An automatically generated, and unedited, transcript of this conversation is available on  https://ihaveanopinion.com/episode-1-lama-jouni-transcript-dc2dd9c80b2e . All errors are left uncorrected.

Find out more about Lama Jouni

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lamajouniofficial/?hl=en

Website: https://lamajouni.com/

Episode Transcript: https://ihaveanopinion.com/episode-1-lama-jouni-transcript-dc2dd9c80b2e

More about Jad Halaoui

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jad-halaoui?originalSubdomain=ae

Twitter: https://twitter.com/superficialjad?lang=en (@superficialjad)

Website: www.ihaveanopinion.com

Show Notes

1:14 - Lama's first collection: "1943"

6:09 - Lama's background story. 

08:09 - Moving to Paris and the challenges associated with it.

13:28 - Fashion school journey. 

15:28 - Researching a collection

22:07 - Favorite fashion designers

27: 15 - Creating a timeless product

29:50 - Designing clothes that give people freedom of self-expression

34:20 - Criticism of her work and turning it into a lesson

35:54 - Starting the brand at 25

37:20 - Shutting down her operation instead of Scaling it up.

41:20 - The impact of a shortage of production facilities in the Middle East on a fashion brand

47:32 - One Day You're In  and the Next You're Out

51:41 - Building a long lasting fashion brand,.

1:02:29 - Process of making a garment

1:10:25 - Sketching a collection

1:13:57 - The importance of fabric selection

1:23:28 - Shutting down the studio in Dubai and moving to Lebanon

1:28:38 - Remaining relevant in the age of fast fashion

1:34:20 - Staying true to your brand

1:37:56 - Anxiety - and difference between reality and narrative in the media - the entrepreneur's struggles

1:49:18 - The moment she realized she needed to rebuild

1:50:18 - Defining Success in the fashion industry

1:51:47 - The kindest thing anybody has done for Lama