Myriam Chalek

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Myriam Chalek
Occupation	Fashion Designer
Organization	Creative Business House, Donnons Leur Une Chance & American Wardrobe
Known for	International Dwarf Fashion Show

Myriam Chalek is a French fashion designer, entrepreneur and diversity and inclusion advocate. She is best known for putting on alternative fashion shows meant to challenge the idea of beauty while empowering people living with disabilities.

Early life and education[]

Chalek was born in France and raised in the Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis. After secondary school, she enrolled at Paris V Descartes Law School. For her bachelor, she gained international experience and acquired a broader worldview through an international exchange student study program with the University of Laval. She then returned to France to study at the University of Paris graduating with a master's degree in international business law.^{[citation needed]}

Career[]

After graduating with her Masters of Law, she went on to work with a variety of organizations and experienced the hierarchy that is common within the work space. Having an entrepreneurial spirit she knew that her next job must be her own.^[1]

Chalek traveled to New York as an F1 student and was quickly offered a full-time employment by the director of the school as a business professor. Through her work at the business institute and New York's fashion industry she met various designers and learned about the process the designers go through in marketing their product. Designers have to work with all these different parties from marketing professionals to lawyers. This was often a daunting process especially for young designers just starting out and yet there was no single company with both the no how and network to guide them. Chalek saw this as an opportunity and decided to fulfill the designers' needs by starting her first company, Creative Business House. Now designers have someone who had the expertise in everything from marketing their product to protecting their intellectual property and other administrative aspects of the design business.^[1]

As her business grew, Chalek found that the various event organizations that she worked with did not meet her needs or were beyond her clients budgets so she created the event company White Tie Affairs to work with Creative Business House clients. Word got out of her success and the philanthropic organization Association Let's Give a Chance offered her the position of vice president. Chalek took the offer and took it a step further by becoming one of its main benefactor partner. A year later she would extend this partnership further by launching "a physical annex in New York City under the name Do Not Be Cheap."^[1]

In April, 2018, Chalek traveled with non-profit organization, "Donnons Leur Une Chance" to distribute tools, sewing machines, and 1000 chickens to families living in poverty.^[2]

International Dwarf Fashion Show[]

One day when Chalek was shopping for clothes she noticed a woman of short stature in the children's section. The women did not have any children with her and appeared to be shopping for herself. The women was obviously frustrated and could not find any clothes that fit and were within her budget.

Chalek later learned that the woman had a disability known as dwarfism, which affects around 30,000 people in the United States and is caused by a number of medical conditions and limits their height to no more than four feet ten inches. Like any disability, dwarfs are not only at risk for a range of medical problems but often are faced with limitations and discrimination.^[3][4] This limits their employment opportunities and forces many to get by on a meager income. With a limited income people living with dwarfism struggle to find clothes that fits. They can either go to a tailor to have custom-made apparel; shop in the children's department hoping to find something that fits them physically and emotionally as adults; or make their own clothes or alter oversized clothing. This forces them to invest a higher amount of money and time in obtaining well fitted clothes.^[4]

Working for years in the fashion industry, Chalek knew that "fashion is about the garment, and not about the person wearing the garment". Chalek knew that the outfits created by the designers come in all types of shapes and sizes and but there a lot of discrimination within the industry and when it comes to hiring models to display the outfits they almost only hire models who are "tall and skinny". Myriam knew this was her chance to challenge the discrimination and idea of beauty and what it means to be beautiful. So utilizing her network within the fashion industry and driven by her need of philanthropy Chalek created The National Dwarf Fashion Show.

In September 2014 The National Dwarf Fashion Show had its debut performance at the Pavillon Gabriel as part of Paris's annual Fashion week. The event supposed to be a single event meant to put the spotlight on dwarfism, brought attention to the existing discriminations within the fashion industry and empowered women living with dwarfism. The event received press coverage and appealed to the Lifetime network producing the reality show Little Women New York who collaborated with Chalek to get a show as part of New York Fashion Week featuring Jordanna James of Little Women New York.^[5]

In 2015, Berlin based fashion designer Sema Gedik learned about Myriam's alternative fashion shows that have been a part of Fashion Week in major cities like Tokyo(Paris and New York). Inspired by the concept, she held a small fashion show as a tribute to her cousin Gedik who was also living with dwarfism.^[6]

The first international dwarf fashion show in Paris led the media to give an abundance of coverage to the event and during the 2015 Fashion Week in Paris the National Dwarf Fashion Show was invited to the French Ministry of Culture^[7] to support and promote alternative standards of beauty in an industry where the values of tall and thin are the norm.^[8][9]

The International Dwarf Fashion Show has taken part in fashion weeks in major cities including Tokyo^[10] and Dubai.^[11]

Blind Fashion Show[]

After success with the Dwarf Fashion Shows, Chalek, wanting to continue to orchestrate and plan activist fashion shows to raise awareness and empower other marginalized groups. In February 2016, New York Fashion Week came to a close with another activist fashion show this time using the fashion platform to shed light on the visually impaired community with the first-ever fashion show consisting of all blind models. Although Chalek encountered some controversy as one of the criteria for models to apply was to walk without their guide dogs or canes, the visually impaired community was positively receptive to the show.^[12]

After the success with New York's Fashion week, Chalek hosted a second blind fashion Show at the Pavillon Vendome as part of Paris's 2016 Fashion Week. The Show featured blind and visually impaired models^[13] Amongst them was 2012 Mrs America and Mrs. World pageant winner, April Lufriu who walked the runway with her daughter Savannah both who currently live with Retinitis Pigmentosa.^[14][15]

#MeToo Movement[]

After great success in using fashion as a means of raising awareness and empowering people living with disabilities, Chalek wanted to raise attention to sexual abuse. During the second night of New York 2018,^[16] she reignited the #MeToo slogan to show the world that sexual violence is also widespread and pervasive in the fashion and modeling industry so other survivors known they are not alone.^[17][18] On February 9, 2018^[15] the #MeToo Fashion Show took place at The Green Room 42, in Manhattan. Chalek used her American Wardrobe label as a platform to benefit women. Eight models each survivors of rape, sexual harassment, child sexual abuse, groping and incest walked the runway wearing garments that represented their abuse.^[19] Each of the survivors walked accompanied by a male model wearing a pig mask which was an oblique reference to the #MeToo movement in France translated as #exposeyourpig. The male models were handcuffed to a chair as victims shared with the audience their experience as a victim of assault or/and sexual misconduct in “vivid and disturbing detail”.^[20] Amongst the survivors, was Alicia Kozakiewiecz a young women who was abducted in 2002 near her Pittsburgh home.

References[]