Biography
Lama Riachi is a Lebanese creative director, designer and entrepreneur based in Dubai, whose career bridges advertising, art and social enterprise. She earned a Master's in Art Direction and Advertising from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) — the Middle East's leading visual-arts and design school — in 2000, and built a career as one of the region's most accomplished creative directors, including a senior role at the global network agency Saatchi & Saatchi and, later, managing partner and creative director at Mojo, an independent boutique advertising, design and digital agency in Dubai. A turning point came with her diagnosis and survival of ovarian cancer. The experience reshaped her sense of purpose and led her, in 2015, to found BLSSD — a social-enterprise fashion label whose name signals gratitude, and whose proceeds support Blessed (together), a cancer support group she created with her sister Lys Riachi. The group focuses especially on the region's migrant workforce, people often far from family and lacking adequate healthcare, and works to break the cultural taboos around cancer. BLSSD has shown at Arab Fashion Week and Dubai Fashion Week and opened a store in Mall of the Emirates, pairing streetwear-influenced luxury with an explicitly stated mission. Across all her work — agency, label, gallery — Riachi has pursued the same idea: that creative work should carry purpose, not just aesthetics.