Success story: Fause Haten

This article is part of an in depth special report on the Lebanese in Brazil. Read more stories as they’re published here, or pick up July’s issue at newsstands in Lebanon. Fause Haten grew up wrapped in fabrics. His parents emigrated from Lebanon in the 1950s and started a small clothing factory — making basic designs sold in the famous Rua 25 de Marco in São Paulo. “My father was doing jeans and shorts. It was a time when big companies were doing clothes, not doing fashion,” he says. As a teenager Haten visited Italy and fell in love. Desperate to travel again but without the funds to do so, he asked his father for a sewing machine to make clothes to sale. “So I started not as an artist or a fashion designer but as a merchant — the same as my parents and grandparents.” Soon, however, he would