razzle dazzle the bejewelled world of nada g ada Ghazal is enjoying the launch of her latest collection at The Third Line in Dubai. The gallery’s co-founder, Sunny Rahbar, and another colleague have just discovered that they all attended the same French summer camp in the mid 1990s. Amid the squeals of delight, Ghazal leans over and whispers, “You see, everything is connected.” It was a fleeting insight into the mind of this talented young Lebanese designer and reflected her life philosophy, which has in turn become the raison d’être of her work. Ghazal is a spiritual person, and the more we converse, the more I realise that her designs mirror her inner self. “People meet for a reason; you travel to a place for a reason, you buy something for a reason,” she says. “Each one of us has a mission in life and there are a lot of connections for us if we are to make it. My mission in life is not to make jewellery: I am using the making of jewellery to fulfil my mission.” Ghazal’s lifelong ambition is to be known as an “independent designer” with her own brand and company. Ghazal’s affiliation with the creative arts stems from her childhood when she would sketch shoes for her mother to have made at the cobbler. If she got bored with a dress, she would transform it into a skirt, and with the walls of the Ghazal family’s six-bedroom home at her disposal, she would paint over them endlessly. “I always had the design element in me,” says Ghazal. “I don’t think I ever really thought what it was in the field of design I wanted to do because there were so many things that I loved to design, like home accessories, shoes, clothes and accessories made out of paper.” The second of six children, Ghazal spent her childhood between Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Kent in the UK and Beirut in Lebanon. It was during her early teens that she knew where her artistic path would lead. Passionate about drawing, Ghazal would spend extra hours in art classes at her boarding school. “I’ll never forget one incident when my art teacher came in and said to me, ‘You’re going to be an artist when you grow up.’ And I said, ‘Actually, I wouldn’t want to become a painter because not everyone gets to see painters’ works and appreciate them. What I want to do is design a Coke can or a Cadbury’s chocolate wrapper.’ My teacher told me that was called commercial art. I asked my father if commercial art existed at university and he told me it was called advertising design. I was 13 at the time and knew then that that was what I wanted to do.” So Ghazal went on to complete her undergraduate education in advertising design at the Lebanese American design T E X T B Y M Y R N A A Y A D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y M A N S O U R D I B A N D C O U R T E S Y O F N A D A G H A Z A L 160 “Each one of us has a mission in life and there are a lot of connections for us if we are to make it. My mission in life is not to make jewellery: I am using the making of jewellery to fulfil my mission.” 161 design in a spirit of self-assertion which was triggered by the death of her father. “I felt the need to be independent and take care of myself. My father’s death didn’t dampen my creativity; I think it enhanced it somehow. As a child, I once drew a picture and caught him boasting about it to his friends. One of the reasons I did advertising design and not regular design was because I always perceived him to be a great businessman. Part of my success in advertising was due to the fact that I used to design and saw the business rationale behind it.” A lot of experiences in Ghazal’s childhood helped to shape her future, such as when she was on a family vacation in the US and caught sight of New York’s skyscrapers. Gazing at the iconic skyline, she wished for an office high up in one of the towers, but before she could do this, her next step was to get a job. At 22, Ghazal landed in Dubai dreaming of working for a multinational company. Impact BBDO hired her as an art director and she also worked part-time with Channel V as a television presenter. “The only thing I thought of back University (formerly known as the Beirut University College). Ghazal excelled, thanks to the entirely conceptual curriculum. “I was very proud of myself at university because I felt I was one of the few people who was doing advertising because I loved it and understood it. I didn’t feel it was for everyone, so, in that sense, I felt somehow ahead of others,” she says. Perhaps a core characteristic of Ghazal is her ambition and innate sense of constantly looking ahead. At the beginning of each phase of her life, Ghazal would already have considered her next step. Always proactive, she freelanced while completing her studies. If a new company was setting up, Ghazal would offer to create their branding. If a company needed fresh print, she would propose new catalogues. “I’m not sure if this is a positive or negative trait, but whenever I’m doing something, I start thinking about what to do next,” she says. “My mother always tells me that when I’m at the peak, I decide to stop, walk away and do something else.” Ghazal’s determination to work while finishing her studies was rooted design 162 163 is impeccable, but that’s because everything is handmade. Ghazal believes her pieces are for, “the versatile, intelligent, powerful, opinionated woman who knows what she wants.” That statement does, in fact, sum up Ghazal. At 35, her list of achievements is impressive and she knows precisely what she wants for Nada G’s future; one can tell that Ghazal is constantly putting her creativity into practice. Her insistence on quality is another one of her meticulous facets. “My turquoise stone supplier must hate me because I handpick the stones one by one. I spread them on the table and spend hours!” In 2005, Ghazal launched another range to her series; Exclusive Frost, which incorporated diamonds and was composed of sets rather than single pieces. Driven by a desire to create diamond jewellery that can be worn to elaborate events just with jeans, Ghazal aimed to reposition diamonds as stones that could in fact be worn all the time. “Pearls and diamonds are my favourite stones. I once had a television interview in Lebanon and one of the presenters said to me, ‘Your jewellery is meant to be for the young but you use a lot of pearls and pearls are for older women.’ I really want to disprove this because pearls are versatile. Someone who is 16 and someone who is 90 can wear pearls. Like everything else, it’s how you use it. I want to break away from tradition and use these stones in a way in which they can be trendy,” believes Ghazal. Over and above the joy, passion and livelihood that ‘Nada G’ has given Ghazal, there is also an emotive boost which her jewellery-making awards her. “As a child, I would stand beside miniature statues made of stone and put my hand on them, thinking that they’d give me energy, and believing they came out of the earth. When I started experimenting with jewellery, the materials I used gave me the same feeling.” A self-confessed believer in the power of semi-precious and precious stones, Ghazal can spend hours in her workshop and end up feeling like her whole body is “tingling.” While Lebanon’s political situation has damaged the country’s economic foundations, Ghazal’s creativity has thankfully not been destroyed. The worrying climate actually proved the inspiration for her latest collection ‘Drops of Hope’, which premiered at Dubai’s The Third Line last March. “I’m proud to be Lebanese, and being surrounded by the Lebanese culture has given me so much inspiration. When I’m in Dubai, I miss Beirut’s car horns! But then again, I’m just a daughter of earth and the universe. I really wish we didn’t have passports and nationalities.” With a boutique in Beirut and distribution through luxury outlets in Dubai, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, Ghazal’s eyes are firmly fixed on the future of ‘Nada G’. One of her aims is to make it a family business, simply because she has faith in her family members and they in turn, have faith in ‘Nada G’. “My family believe in me so much that I feel I can never let them down. They’re proud of me and I want to make them prouder. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing this for them or for myself. It’s almost as though I can’t tell if we are one or if I am one.” The world’s capitals are Ghazal’s next ambition, but one thing remains certain - this young woman may well have her feet on the ground but she is certainly reaching for the stars. o For further information on the work of Nada Ghazal, please call +961 1560591 or visit www.nadag.com design then was working. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else at all. I’d work during the day with Impact and during the night with Channel V,” she says. Ghazal became engrossed in television production and decided to pursue it further. After four years at Impact BBDO, she moved to Leo Burnett to attain more experience and was asked to start up a television production department. All the while, Ghazal never lost sight of her dream to become an “independent designer.” Afraid of “hitting 70 and regretting not having fulfilled a dream,” Ghazal resigned. Her 30th birthday was her last day at work. “People told me I was crazy,” she says. “They were saying others dreamed of a job like mine, but I never ever hesitated. A lot of signs told me to move on.” Fearless, Ghazal knew she would find her calling and she had that confirmed, albeit subliminally, just as she left Dubai. While running errands one day, Ghazal mistakenly parked in a spot for disabled people. Upon returning to her car, a police officer was writing a ticket. She pleaded with him that it was an honest mistake. “He was hesitating, but then took my license and read my name out loud: Nada Wihab Ghazal. Then he said, ‘I’ll let you go this time, but it’s for Wihab’s sake.’ In a weird sense, that told me that my father was looking out for me and blessed my decision somehow.” Without a plan or an inkling of what was to come, Ghazal headed for Beirut. “I thought that if I wanted to start my own business, it should be where I want to spend the rest of my life and Beirut was it.” Ghazal dabbled for the first few months, creating cushions, photo albums and jewellery. In the summer of 2003, she created a few items in gold and went to visit a friend in Dallas and then went on to New York. “I wore some of my pieces in New York intentionally. People would ask me where I got them from. That told me that they would work,” says Ghazal. On her return to Beirut, Ghazal bought a professional table and set to work. She would visit goldsmiths and watch them work, then buy all the necessary utensils and research suppliers for semi-precious stones. For two months, Ghazal cocooned herself at home, creating a small collection composed of gold and semi-precious stones, which she would feature in an open house in December 2003. It was a success and no sooner had she showcased her collection, than she heard about a jewellery exhibition coming up at Beirut’s Intercontinental Phoenicia hotel. In just 15 days, Ghazal created piece after piece, but she also had to brand herself. “Every piece of art needs the artist’s signature and if I wanted to sign my pieces, they would be signed ‘Nada Ghazal’. But coming from an advertising background, ‘Nada Ghazal’ has a nationality, which was how I thought of ‘Nada G’. The name stuck. I asked non-Lebanese people what they thought and the feedback was good. So, Nada G was born and the actual logo is part of my signature. After the exhibition, I decided to create a company.” Ghazal’s boutique opened in November 2004 in Beirut’s hip district of Gemmayzeh. She threw herself into every detail of her shop - from its interior design to its brochures - and subsequently launched two lines: ‘Original’, which includes gold and semi-precious stones, and ‘No Limit’. “I wanted to create pieces that I could wear to the gym or the beach; basically, pieces that I can wear all the time. I assumed that if I want this, it means others do as well, and that’s how ‘No Limit’ was created. My brother came up with the name during one of our brainstorming sessions.” All of Ghazal’s creations have a common denominator, a signature and the obvious trademark of wire. “Using wire in my jewellery is a reflection of my belief that everything is connected. My jewellery has a soul, it has a life,” says Ghazal. Her pieces are indeed beautiful and echo the intense thought process that has gone into their creation. The craftsmanship design “Using wire is a reflection of my belief that everything is connected. My jewellery has a soul. It has life!” “I thought that if I wanted to start my own business, it should be where I want to spend the rest of my life and Beirut was it.” 164 165