Nazgol Rezapour Rad on leaving home at seventeen, building a career inside the international fashion industry, transforming Persian mirror art into wearable objects, and creating DOT BY NANA as a new world of independent design and discovery.
Some people discover fashion. Others seem to grow up already understanding its language.
For Nazgol Rezapour Rad, known as Nana to those closest to her, clothing was never simply about getting dressed. It was expression, character, proportion, memory and identity.
She grew up in an Iranian family with a deep appreciation for elegance, beautiful objects and personal style. Paris and European fashion were familiar parts of the family’s world, while clothing was something to experiment with rather than simply wear. From an early age, Nazgol became familiar with international fashion houses, styling and the transformative power of clothes.
But behind that fascination was another visual education entirely.
Iran.
A country of poetry and pomegranates, Persian gardens and the scent of orange blossom. A culture shaped by extraordinary architecture, miniature painting, calligraphy, carpets, geometry, mirrored palaces and centuries of craftsmanship.
Nazgol grew up conscious of belonging to a country whose relationship with art extended far beyond decoration. In its more recent cultural history, Empress Farah Pahlavi became internationally recognized for her patronage of art, architecture and culture, helping connect Iran with some of the most significant artistic conversations and figures of the twentieth century.
It was a world in which ancient Persian aesthetics could exist alongside radical modernity.
That contrast would eventually become important to Nazgol herself.
At seventeen, she left Iran for Budapest to pursue a life that, at the time, existed primarily in her imagination.
She did not leave her roots behind.
She took them with her.
THE EDUCATION OF AN EYE
Nazgol’s education crossed art, design, architecture and business, disciplines that would later become unexpectedly interconnected in her career.
Architecture taught her proportion and structure. Art history gave her an understanding of visual culture and the importance of what came before. International business management introduced another essential element: how creativity becomes something sustainable.
Fashion became the meeting point.
Her professional life developed across different sides of the industry, from editorial and production to luxury, sales, marketing, styling and brand management.
At FashionTV Budapest, she worked within creative operations, branding, production and events, experiencing the machinery behind fashion rather than simply its finished image.
Her career later expanded into the international editorial environment through Fashion To Max, where her work encompassed fashion production, styling, fittings, backstage projects and editorial collaborations. That world brought experiences connected with names including Bulgari and Louis Vuitton, alongside creative environments involving figures such as Anna Dello Russo and Maxim Sapozhnikov, as well as projects connected with the wider international Vogue editorial world, including Italy and Japan.
Yet some of her most valuable experience came from understanding what happens after the image has been created.
For three years, Nazgol worked closely with Nini Molnar, assisting the founder within the daily reality of an independent fashion business. Her role crossed sales management, marketing, creative ideation and brand development.
It was an education in the commercial psychology of fashion.
She learned that creating desire requires more than creating something beautiful. A brand needs identity, positioning, communication and an understanding of the person on the other side of the product.
Her perspective was further developed through specialist fashion and luxury education, including studies with The Business of Fashion and L’École, School of Jewelry Arts supported by Van Cleef & Arpels.
Years of working around other people’s visions eventually produced an inevitable question.
What would her own look like?
A MIRROR FROM HOME
The answer began not in a fashion archive, but in a childhood memory.
Nazgol remembers the interiors created by her mother, a woman with an instinctive eye for unusual antiques, art and decoration.
In their home, Persian objects could coexist with European pieces. Traditional Iranian mirror work could appear alongside Venetian mirrors. Things did not need to originate from the same country or century to belong together.
They simply needed to speak to one another.
Years later, that memory became the beginning of SHÂNGÉ ART.
In 2022, Nazgol began looking again at āineh kāri, the traditional Iranian art of mirror work.
But she looked at it differently.
Instead of treating mirror work purely as architectural decoration, she imagined taking it away from the wall entirely.
What if an art traditionally experienced across ceilings, palaces and interiors could become intimate?
What if architecture could become an accessory?
What if fragments of reflected light could be worn?
SHÂNGÉ ART grew from that experiment.
Persian geometry met contemporary design. Mirror met crystal. Architectural references became objects for the body.
The intention was never to reproduce Iranian heritage exactly as it had existed before.
Nazgol wanted to reinterpret it.
To take something deeply familiar from her cultural memory and place it somewhere unexpected.
Tradition did not need to remain untouched in order to be respected. Sometimes allowing it to evolve was another way of keeping it alive.
FROM AN IDEA TO A WORLD
Behind the evolution of SHÂNGÉ ART was also a deeply personal source of encouragement.
Nazgol’s husband, Hadi, recognized the potential of the project and encouraged her to continue developing it, pushing her to think beyond an individual collection and imagine what the idea could become on a larger international scale.
That encouragement eventually opened another question.
Why stop with one brand?
After years spent working in fashion, travelling, discovering independent designers and developing an increasingly specific visual point of view, Nazgol wanted to create a platform capable of bringing those discoveries together.
That idea became DOT BY NANA.
NOT MORE. BETTER CHOSEN.
The world does not need another website filled with thousands of things to buy.
Nazgol knows that.
DOT BY NANA was created around the opposite philosophy.
Selection rather than accumulation.
It is a curated platform bringing together independent designers, emerging talent, fashion, accessories, art objects and collectible pieces chosen through one particular point of view.
There is no requirement for everything to look the same.
The connection is not category.
It is character.
A sculptural accessory can exist beside an unexpected garment. An emerging designer can share the same world with an object that sits somewhere between fashion, design and art.
The purpose is discovery.
At a time when algorithms increasingly decide what people should see, wear and desire, DOT BY NANA places its faith in something far more personal.
A human eye.
Someone looked.
Someone discovered.
Someone chose.
For Nazgol, that distinction is fundamental.
Her relationship with fashion was formed through years of working across its different layers. Editorial rooms, production, sales, marketing, luxury, styling, travel, museums, designers and conversations all contributed to the way she now chooses.
DOT BY NANA is therefore not simply an online store.
It is an edit.
And perhaps more importantly, it is the culmination of everything that came before it.
THE ROOTS NEVER LEFT
There is something quietly circular about Nazgol’s story.
The seventeen year old who left Iran to discover the wider world eventually found herself returning to elements of the place she had left.
Not geographically.
Creatively.
The mirrors returned.
The geometry returned.
The fascination with beautiful objects returned.
The instinct inherited from a mother who could place Persian mirror work beside Venetian glass without questioning whether they belonged together returned.
Budapest, Milan, Paris, Muscat and years of international experience expanded her visual vocabulary, but they never erased its first language.
Perhaps distance simply allowed her to see it differently.
Today, Nazgol exists at the intersection of several identities within fashion.
Entrepreneur. Designer. Creative Director. Curator.
But underneath all of them is something simpler.
An eye that has spent years learning what to notice.
DOT BY NANA represents the next chapter of that evolution, an international platform built not around having everything, but around finding the things that feel impossible to ignore.
Because after years spent inside an industry constantly asking what comes next, Nazgol has become interested in another question entirely.
What deserves to be discovered?
Perhaps that is the thread connecting everything.
The Iranian girl surrounded by beautiful objects.
The seventeen year old who left home with an idea of another life.
The woman working behind other people’s images.
The designer who took mirrors from architecture and imagined them against the body.
And finally, the entrepreneur who decided to build a world around the art of choosing differently.
“I never wanted to create another place filled with things to buy. I wanted to create a world where you could find something you did not know you were looking for.”
Nazgol Rezapour Rad
Founder and Creative Director, DOT BY NANA
Founder and Designer, SHÂNGÉ ART