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Ahead of accepting a Special Recognition Award at The Fashion Awards, Tania Fares talks about her formative internship with Pierre Cardin, being inspired by Lulu Kennedy and how all that led to founding one of fashion’s biggest non-profits. This story is part of My First Job in Fashion , interviews with fashion insiders on the roles who made them who they are today.
I always wanted to work in fashion, but I didn’t want to be a designer — I wanted to work behind the scenes. My mother was a beautiful woman inside and out. She also was very fortunate to be able to wear couture and had impeccable taste. She frequently attended fashion shows in Paris, and sometimes would take me along. That’s how I became interested in fashion.
My uncle was famed decorator Joseph Achkar. Him and his partner Michel Charrière refurbished Hôtel de la Marine in France. He’s the person who got me into art. We used to go to Fontainebleau together, to Versailles, to the Louvre... He got me an internship with Pierre Cardin, after I finished my university studies in communication.
At Pierre Cardin, I did a bit of everything, like most interns do — folding clothes, making coffee, that kind of thing. Six months later, he hired me to work as part of his communications team. I have been so blessed to work with someone so passionate and so creative. Everyday was something different with Pierre. He taught me the importance of being kind but tough at the same time. He also always spoke about the unisex style — that you can be whoever you are and dress the way you want to dress. The time I spent working for him really opened my eyes when it came to the business side of fashion.
It was through Pierre that I understood, too, the importance for a designer to be close to their clients. He knew how to make the women who shopped from him feel so comfortable in themselves. And it gave him great insight into what his customers wanted, of course.
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It’s the number one advice I give any young designer I meet: to make sure they are exposed to their customers. Through Fashion Trust — and especially our Mentorship Program — we do everything we can to help bring together a community that will appreciate and buy their designs. At the end of the day, they need to get to know their customers to understand how they can improve their business.
I have really carried that learning with me throughout my career. When Lulu Kennedy and I founded Lulu Co in 2006, Vassi Chamberlain and Christina Goulandris hosted a trunk show for us. I’ll never forget that afternoon – to have so much feedback from friends and the wider community; what they liked and didn’t like… It really helped shape the business.
My experience and my relationship with Lulu Kennedy was another thing that really shaped me and really created the foundations for all the work I do with Fashion Trust. I met her through Judith Greer and together we set up the Lulu Co brand. We worked together for five or six years; Lulu was on the design end, and I handled the more operational side of the business.
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I became so in awe of what she did for young designers through Fashion East. I learnt from watching her collaborate with a lot of artists and our showrooms in Paris. It was an unbelievable experience and very tough because it is a very tough industry. You may sell, but six months later, you have to pay for your production. Then, you have to increase your production. It’s a hard infrastructure for young designers to navigate.
I met so many people from the fashion industry through Lulu and I was also very involved in the arts — supporting Tate, Serpentine and other institutions. I felt that there were so many individuals supporting the art world. But not so much the fashion world. I thought, why can’t we do both? You could love art, but you also love fashion and give to both.
It was a bit complicated for me to be involved with Fashion East, since we already were working together on the brand. So 14 years ago, I founded the BFC Fashion Trust together with Sian Westerman. Ex-British Vogue editor-in-chief Alex Shulman introduced me to ex-BFC CEO Caroline Rush, and I went to meet her with Harold Tillman, who was British Fashion Council chair back then. I said I would like to start a platform where we can raise funds to support young designers. Caroline loved the idea, and asked me to put together a proposal. I did and in that process I came up with the Fashion Trust name. Trust in fashion; I wanted to include the word ‘trust’.
We presented the plan to Caroline and she liked it. And then we had to find patrons. I come from a culture where speaking about money is awkward. So the first few meetings I took, I didn’t even ask for support. We had this lunch one day for potential patrons. When lunch finished, I hadn’t asked for money. Then, we had another, and again I didn’t dare. Eventually I had to tell myself, “Tanya, either you’re gonna start asking people for money or it’s not happening.” Once I did it, I realized it wasn’t that hard. Now, I love asking people for money!
The key is to be passionate about what you present, and to be direct. Don’t play games. It’s not nice, if people think you have asked for a meeting and they don’t know you are about to ask them for something. My first patron was Megha Mittal, who is also a friend.
The Fashion Trust patrons are all great women who invest financially, with their time, or both into young fashion talent. Some are lawyers, some are entrepreneurs, some have a fund, they’re all very interesting women. Right now in the UK we have 53 patrons. At one point we had 120 but we streamlined, which is why the number has halved.
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In 2019, I co-founded Fashion Trust Arabia; and in 2021, Fashion Trust US. In the US, we have patrons too, but in the Middle East, we have sponsors. This time around in Doha, we had Visit Qatar, Qatar Airways, Anastasia of Beverly Hills and others.
The way the Middle East project came about is that in 2017, I co-wrote a book with Vogue’s Sarah Mower about young designers in London. On the occasion of its publishing, my aunt, who lives in Jordan, invited me to attend a gathering. There, I met so many unbelievable designers, and many said to me that night, “Please do something here like what you’re doing in the UK. The region needs it.”
I am from Lebanon, I speak Arabic fluently and understand the region deeply. The Middle East is unbelievable, but there is also the Levant, there is North Africa, there is the GCC. My parents worked in hospitality and we always had clients from all over the region, too. I feel I can understand the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Qataris, the Egyptians...
So I went to meet Her Highness, Sheikha Moza. She is someone I’ve always admired and looked up to, and she told me that they were looking into doing something of the sort in the region, too. She introduced me to her daughter, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad Al Thani, and we began to work on this project that would bridge both cultures, the West and the Middle East (I am so grateful for her support; she started as my co-chair and she is now like a sister to me). I did a lot of research to understand what is needed and what we could do to improve, and had this idea of bringing Western judges to the Middle East.
The way it works is that every year we open an application season. We get about 600 applications in the US, 1,000 in the UK and 1,200 in the Middle East. We then narrow it down to about 150 to 200 applications and we send them to our advisory board, who eventually pick a finalist.
Our boards are large and include people from all over the fashion industry because it’s nice to have diverse voices. We just had the Fashion Trust Arabia judging and it was so fun to see how people were competing — people got divided into groups depending on who they wanted to win. We had a very open conversation, moderated by an expert who would ask people’s reasons for supporting X or Y designers. It all felt very authentic. They then voted, we counted the votes and announced the winner.
The Fashion Trust team is small — there are three people in the US and eight in the Middle East. So I am very proud of the impact we have managed to create over the years. The things that have improved compared to when we started Fashion Trust Arabia in 2019 is number one the talent and the quality of the garments. And I feel like interest in the region is really growing on the consumer side, too. What happened with Matches was very sad and has left a big gap in the industry in terms of discovery platforms. Of course, Fashion Trust is not a retailer, but maybe we can help shine a light on new, fresh talent.
As part of the latest Fashion Trust Arabia event, we had an exhibition of garments made by finalists and winners through the years — it was called Threads of Impact. I would really love that exhibition to travel in the future. And I want to grow our mentorship scheme, too. This year, we will do it over three days, as opposed to two in the past, and we will have around 25 speakers from all sorts of backgrounds — from e-commerce, to merchandising, to sustainability. We set it up for all our designers, and everyone flies to London for it.
It’s interesting because working with so many young people, I can see the future is a lot more based on technology — they are 3D printing, using AI and all sorts of other tools, but the skills most need to know are inherently human. I always tell people they need to be authentic, to stay true to their identity as a brand and to foster relationships with their communities — all only possible through human interaction and collaboration, which today feels more important than ever.
