Tara Ghazanfar is the founder and creative director of the fashion brand TARA ZADEH.
She writes: "My name is Tara Ghazanfar. I was in 1988 in Houston Texas. After 6 months my parents moved to London, UK where my brother was born 2 years later. At the age of 6 years old we moved to Paris, France. I graduated from high school in 2007, receiving my French Baccalaureate in Literature with an award.
In September 2007 I moved to New York City to study graphic design at Parsons School of Design. I graduated from University with a Bachelor in Fine Arts in 2011. Every summer during my years at Parsons, I would do internships at renowned companies to experience the different fields of graphic design.
I interned at the Gagosian Gallery designing their books and posters. At Chanel, I did marketing design and at Lloyd and Co, an advertising agency I was at the heart of all things branding.
When I graduated from Parsons, I moved to London for 3 months to intern at Dazed and Confused magazine. I was working alongside the Art Director. When I moved back to New York City at the beginning of 2012, I got my first job at a world renowned Interview Magazine.
After a year working there I needed to feel more motivation so I moved to a branding company called The Science Project, where I designed the first only magazine for the brand Kiehl's, and worked on some very exciting projects for big brands.
At the beginning of 2014, I was contacted by a magazine in London called The Gentleman's Journal, a lifestyle magazine for men. They were looking for an Art Director and wanted me to move to London for the role. I thought it was a great opportunity and so I moved to London in April 2014. At the same time, I was asked to be the Art Director of Whitewall magazine, an international art magazine based in New York, but the job could be done remotely. For 3 years, I worked very hard for both magazines and found it very rewarding and exciting.
At the end of 2016, I began to think about what was next for me. I always wanted to have my own brand — I wasn't really sure what exactly. I loved clothes, shoes and jewellery and so I very naturally started drawing handbags. I come from a very artistic background, my uncle is YZ Kami, a very famous painter, so I was always encouraged by my family to follow my passions.
I launched my brand Tara Zadeh in the summer of 2017, the same summer I got married. Haunched my brand with a trunk show on Moda Operandi. That gave me a lot of visibility and retailers and press were all coming to me. I did my first showroom during Paris Fashion Week in September 2017. I sold my collections to Net a Porter, Browns, Farfetch, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdales and the list goes on.
It was incredible, my bags were being worn by top influencers and celebrities like Emma Thompson, Sara Sampaio, Karlie Kloss, Rocky Barnes etc.
My partner Nika Diamond-Krendel and I co-founded a non-profit initiative called Zanaée. Zanaée celebrates and empowers Iranian women in the creative world. We want to spotlight the incredible talents and give the recognition these women deserve. In the same time we want to create a mentorship program for the up and coming generations
