« When I was a little girl at school, I used to wear a green bra, because I knew it would show through my white shirt. I always needed to customize my uniform: a crease here, a pleat there… I was always punished because of those misbehaviors! » Today, Ella Zahlan needs no more to wear something shocking to satisfy her desire for creation. Besides, according to her, a woman should dress « in an original way without being too much eccentric ». When I met her, she was wearing a white sweater and jeans, with some glittery color touches on her sweater. The young woman (she looks around 40 but we couldn’t quite know) is very nice, and doesn’t act haughtily like many people working in the Fashion field.

Ella Zahlan was born in Ghana, in Africa. During her childhood and teenage years, she moved back and forth between the African continent and Lebanon before settling in Beirut: she followed design studies at the CAMM School - Lebanon in 1986. In the late 1988, she started working in this field. She established her own workshop in 1990. Now, forty employees work in her workshop, and her boutique is located in Naccache. She mainly devotes herself to the haute couture, but in order to develop her business even more, she is seriously thinking of working in the fine ready-to-wear clothes: « In the ready-to-wear business, we work on 30 pieces that we can sell, and not only on two or three as it is the case in the haute couture, she explains. It is a very interesting market ».