We all can all use a lit­tle help some­times, whether it’s dumb luck, good Karma, or even pro­tec­tion from harms way, in this new mil­len­nium, when times have never been so tough, even the most rough and rugged could use a side­kick from time to time. So what should you do? Guns, body­guards, and sur­veil­lance cam­eras could help, but that can only pro­tect you so much, what about the spir­i­tual world? Yes, as wacky as it sounds you do need pro­tec­tion from the evils of the spir­i­tual world, and I’m not talk­ing about ghosts or ghouls, but the evil that is con­jured up in the form of envy and hate. Unfor­tu­nately, there isn’t a bul­let big enough, or a body­guard strong enough to stop neg­a­tive energy directed onto us. So what do I sug­gest? I sug­gest you go out and buy an Evil Eye.

It’s voodoo, a super­sti­tion. A blue orb painted to look like an omi­nous blue eye. In cul­tures around the world, the Evil Eye is seen as a way of pro­tec­tion. If you’re Armen­ian and read­ing this, you prob­a­bly have a few hang­ing around your house, and some of you might actu­ally look up from this arti­cle and see it star­ing right at you, and why do we all own sev­eral of these almost pagan relics? Because our ances­tors knew that being looked upon with hatred, could cost your life, the eye became a way of deflect­ing dark magic. Peo­ple from around the world wear them in jew­elry, use it as décor, and now it comes in the form of fash­ion. In a cold night in an unfa­mil­iar city, I am going to find out how an old cus­tom is blended with a new idea. I am going to inter­view Marillest.

Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia, the cen­ter of the mod­ern uni­verse, the city of the newest in enter­tain­ment, music, and fash­ion. LA teaches the rest of the world what to watch, lis­ten to, and wear, and I had a chance to inter­view three young women in the fash­ion busi­ness that are a part of that new wave in fash­ion, what they call street wear. So there I was in the end­less city, stand­ing out­side a pop­u­lar cof­fee shop, an audio recorder and notepad in one hand, and a hand­ful of notes about the three women, the cre­ators of Mar­illest in the other. I scan over the bios, the his­tory, and try to remain focused on the job at hand. Sip­ping my warm cof­fee on a cold LA night, I’m not wait­ing long until I look out and see what can only be described as Armen­ian Dri­ving 101. Two Ger­man sport cars roar into the park­ing lot, they thrash around cor­ners, the sounds of music and the engine singing fill the air, dri­ving a bit eva­sive, and when the cars find spaces, in uni­son, the wheel is flu­idly but quickly turned, and both cars stop with author­ity. Three doors open, three come out, Arpa Sar­ian, Mari Nazaryan, and Piruz Dedeyan.

I first intro­duce myself to Arpa Sar­ian. Arpa is the busi­ness minded of the three. Her hand­shake is firm, she keeps strong eye con­tact, and within sec­onds you feel her con­fi­dence and self assur­ance come through. The next in line was Piruz Dedeyan, the energy, moti­va­tion, and spir­i­tu­al­ity in the group.She does not for­feit her smile once through­out the night, and the con­stant gleam in her eye, zeal for all things Mar­illest, and just pos­i­tive atti­tude lift the spir­its on a depress­ing and rainy night. Finally there is Mari Nazaryan. The quiet artist, the mys­te­ri­ous third piece to the puz­zle, she is the blend between her part­ners. We fin­ish with the intro­duc­tions, make our way inside and escape the pat­ter­ing rain. We all sip our teas and coffee’s to warm up, and we begin.

Mar­illest is a fash­ion team that really came together just two years ago. The con­cept of was orig­i­nally a dif­fer­ent name, and Mari was cus­tom design­ing indi­vid­ual hats, putting hours of art­work into each hat, then once Arpa and Piruz came along, the dream started to become some­thing real. Arpa took over as head of mar­ket­ing and sales, and Piruz took the role of per­sonal pho­tog­ra­pher and prod­uct devel­op­ment. Mari’s job is to design, what you see on the shirts and hats, she cre­ated, so while she keeps busy with the fash­ion end, Arpa han­dles the finances and pro­mo­tion, and Piruz makes sure they have the best qual­ity mate­ri­als to work with and that every­one is in high spir­its. Hear­ing them speak to each other, see­ing them work together, but also just being friends, you see the deep respect that they have for each other. They are sup­port­ive, work as a team, and though they admit to butting heads from time to time, the end result, the goal, will always put small dis­putes to the side. To the women read­ing this arti­cle, and even the guys, what you should take away from this is not just a web­site where you can buy cus­tom shirts and hats (Marillest.com), but a lesson.

One of the girls’ biggest accom­plish­ment this year, how­ever, was the Fash­ion Show they put on July, 23 2010 at Hol­ly­wood night club La Vida.

“Our fash­ion show was very much a suc­cess. We had rap artist one-2 per­form his hit “Go” and all the mod­els played their char­ac­ter just right and left peo­ple in awe,” said Piruz Dedeyan. “We had a vari­ety of peo­ple in the crowd, start­ing from pro-skaters, to a real­ity show pilot that was film­ing through­out the night. Most of All good vibes and energy, it def­i­nitely opened the doors to what Mar­illest is about.”

The out­come of the show sur­passed their expectations

“We sold out the entire venue. It was over capac­ity which left almost a hun­dred peo­ple out­side in line. I went in not expect­ing any­thing but fam­ily friends and the buy­ers and investors we had invited to come out. For­tu­nately word got around town and the entire city came out to sup­port us,” said Arpa Sar­ian. “Now that I look back at it was like a wed­ding. The prepa­ra­tion took months and it was all gone in a minute. It was spec­tac­u­larly orches­trated and left a big smile on my face all night.”

I could tell you about the fash­ion, but they speak for them­selves well enough, I don’t need to really blow it up, you will see with every shirt and hat comes a per­son­al­ity, a sense of humor, and if you catch the ref­er­ences, you know they pay homage to old school tra­di­tions of the old world and ne world. You see a unique blend of some­thing our grand­moth­ers val­ued, but at the same time, youth­ful and fresh.

Arme­ni­ans, use Mar­illest as an exam­ple. In a male dom­i­nate indus­try, in one of the worst economies in world his­tory, three women decided to do what oth­ers thought an impos­si­ble feat. There story isn’t like the ones you see on TV. This is far from the Kar­dashi­ans fake real­ity of try­ing to make it in fash­ion, no, these women wake up every morn­ing know­ing that the only way to achieve suc­cess is through mak­ing some­thing orig­i­nal, some­thing cre­ative, and putting a lot of hard work behind it. As Arme­ni­ans we tend to get caught up in what our fam­i­lies and friends want from us, we for­get that there is a world out there beyond being what our par­ents and grand­par­ents dreamed for us. Arpa, Mari, and Piruz have decided to con­quer one of the tough­est indus­tries in this coun­try, and at first peo­ple would crit­i­cize them and give false encour­age­ment, but it goes to show that there is some magic behind the Evil Eye. Mar­illest has seen its share of fail­ures, they talked about the times when money was tight, the road seem­ingly impos­si­ble, the girls decided not to give up, to work harder, and con­tinue to show every­one that you can accom­plish any­thing with the right work ethic and strong atti­tude. To sum it up, the girls of Mar­illest said it best: “Ain’t got the time, ain’t got the money”.

The Armen­ian Chronicles

By MATT NAZARIAN Mattnazarian@gmail.com