User:Fightforsocialjustice/Myriam Chalek

Myriam Chalek is a French fashion designer, entrepreneur and disabilities activist. 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
Myriam was born in France to parents from Setif Algeria. She was raised in the Paris suburbs of Seine Saint Denis. After secondary school she went to Canada to study at the University of Laval eventually graduating with a Bachelor’s degree. She then returned to France to study at the University of Paris graduating with a Masters in Law.

Career
After graduating with her masters in 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.

Myriam traveled to New York and found work as a Professor at a business institute. Through her work at the business institute and New York 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. Myriam saw this an opportunity and started her first company Creative Business House. Now designers has someone who had the expertise in everything from marketing their product to protecting their intellectual property and other administrative aspects of the design business.

As her business grew Myriam found that the various event organizations that she worked with did not meet her needs or were beyond her clients budgets so see 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. Myriam took the offer and took it a step further by make Creative Business House the Benefactor partner. A years later she would extend this partnership further by launching “a physical annex in New York City under the name Do Not Be Cheap”

National Dwarf Fashion Show
One day when Myriam 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.

Myriam later learned that the women had a disability known as Dwarfism. A disability that 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. This limits their employment opportunities and forces many to get by on a meager income. Despite a limited income people living with dwarfism struggle to find clothes that fits something that most people take for granted. They can either go to one of the few stores that that specializes in dwarf clothing but most are forced to shop in the children's department and hope to find something that fits or make their own clothes by buying two of the same outfit and combining them in such a way that the new outfit created fits. This not only forces them to spend a lot of time but also a lot of money in obtaining clothes.

Working for years in the fashion industry Myriam knew that "fashion is about the garment and not about the person wearing the garment". If so one is able to get up and walk the runway wearing a garment created by a designer, then they could be a model. But because of the discrimination within the fashion industry the only people chosen to be model are those who are tall and thin and for that reason tall and this is what is society sees as beautiful. Myriam knew this was her chance to challenge this and working with her vast network from years in the fashion industry she created the National Dwarf Fashion Show.

In September 2014 The National Dwarf Fashion Show had its debut performance at the Pavillon Gariel as part of Paris’s annual Fashion week. The event was suppose to be a single event meant to challenge the definition of beauty, bring attention to discrimination within the fashion industry and empower women living with dwarfism. The event received great press coverage and got the attention of the producers of Little Women New York who worked to get a show as part of New York Fashion Week featuring Jordanna James of Little People New York.

Berlin based fashion designer Sema Gedik learned about these alternative fashion shows that have been a part of Fashion Week in two major cities (Paris and New York) and how it was both challenging the definition of beauty and empowering people living with dwarfism. Gedik having a cousin who was living with dwarfism saw this as an opportunity to help empower people like her cousin and had dwarf models present her 2015 collection during Berlin's fashion week.

The 2014 fashion show in Paris got people talking about beauty and during the 2015 Fashion Week in Paris the National Dwarf Fashion Show was invited to the French Ministry of Culture to support an a government initiative to promote alternative standards of beauty in an industry the values tall and thin.