| Bibi Russell |
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Bibi Russell (Bangla: বিবি রাসেল) is a fashion designer and former international model from Bangladesh. Born in Chittagong, Bangladesh, she studied in London College of Fashion, earning a graduate degree in 1975. In the next five years, she worked as a model for different magazines including Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar. She also worked as a fashion model in fashion shows until 1994, working with Yves Saint Laurent, Kenzo, Karl Lagerfeld and Giorgio Armani. Having returned to Bangladesh in 1994, Bibi opened Bibi Productions, her own fashion house, fusing indigenous Bengali cultural elements into her line. With assistance from UNESCO, she organized her first European fashion show in Paris in 1996. As of 2004, her company employed 35,000 weavers in rural Bangladesh. Her enterpreneurship has earned her many awards. The Asiaweek magazine highlighted her as "one of the 20 people to watch in the millennium". [1]