Reem Acra

While a teenager, she joined the fashion club at the American University in Beirut where she graduated in 1982 with a business degree. She held a fashion show in June 1982 that attracted 2,000 people. In 1986, she graduated magna cum laude from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and won the Fashion Design Department’s award for her year. After graduating from FIT, Acra studied at the École Supérieure des Arts et Techniques de la Modedesign school in Paris.
After her studies at ESMOD in Paris, she took mainstream fashion design positions in Hong Kong and Taiwan. At the age of 25 she was overseeing a $30 million project, but left after seven years to start her own line in New York Reem Acra worked as a luxury interior designer for three years before starting her own line.