The View from the Basement

It all began on the rooftop. These days, the magic happens downstairs.

1921: A boy from Hajin

In 1921, a young boy arrived in Athens with his family from Hajin, an Armenian town in the mountains north of Adana. They were survivors of the genocide of Armenians and Greeks in Asia Minor. They settled in Dourgouti, the refugee neighbourhood in today's Neos Kosmos, where Armenian and Greek families built a life out of almost nothing. Houses were shacks, but the streets filled with small workshops, taverns and music.

My grandfather was the eldest son, so school was never an option. His job was to bring money home. He took whatever work the city centre offered, from shining shoes to selling small things at the flea market. Some nights he didn't make it back to Dourgouti and slept on the Athenian rooftops. Often it was the same one: the roof of the building that would one day become his shop. Our shop. He had no idea...

1956: A name that means home

When he officially opened in 1956, he named the shop Ararat, after the mountain that has long stood as a symbol of home for Armenians.

There were no easy supply chains back then. The shop was packed with whatever he could find at auctions, at second-hand markets, and from passers-by who came to the centre with something to sell. Coats, trousers, hats, even the odd musical instrument. If it was good and someone needed it, it was on the shelf!

The "Αμερικάνικα" years

That knack for finding good second-hand pieces paid off in the 70s and 80s, when the shop really took off. Young Athenians wanted one look: American army surplus, "Τα Αμερικάνικα" as everyone called it. Ararat became a place to find the real thing: the legendary M-65 parka, and the Alpha Industries flight jacket from back when Alpha was still a military contractor, not a fashion label. And to top it off, quite literally: military berets, patrol caps, navy wool beanies, boonie hats and, come summer, straw hats. Hats had been on the shelves from day one. Now, more and more, they were what people came in for.

My father and the hats

Then my father came in, and he saw something coming. A new street culture was taking shape, and with it came a new way of dressing. Flat caps and baseball caps went from accessories to must-haves. He built a hat collection that quickly became the shop's best-selling category.

He travelled a lot to find brands, and those trips opened doors. He brought Kangol and Dorfman to Ararat. He also worked with small Greek milliners, and with companies like Karfil that would go on to become giants of Greek hat wholesale. With that selection, Ararat earned its name as a destination hat shop.

The hard years

Then came the Greek financial crisis. For more than a decade, things went from bad to worse: shops closing, empty streets, debt piling up, cash disappearing. Covid capped it all off.

Around us, businesses cut staff just to stay afloat. My father didn't. Some of his people had been with the shop for decades, and to him they weren't numbers on a balance sheet. So when money got tight, he tightened his own belt instead.

Two of them are still with us today, close to retirement now. They are as much a part of Ararat as anything on the shelves. They're the most important thing my father left behind: a reminder that people come first, even when your back is against the wall.

A new chapter

My father passed away suddenly. By then I had taken a different path, through my studies and a corporate career. Now the shop was mine to carry forward, in a trade I still had a lot to learn about.

Those first days were hard. It was the three of us (the two employees and me), learning to understand each other. They were patient with new ideas, and together we worked out how to make it work.

What worked was quality. While everyone else competed on price and let quality slide, we went the other way. Every collection was curated so quality came first, even if that meant higher prices. Only things we'd want to buy ourselves made it onto the shelves, never things we'd have to push. Step by step, with a lot of help from data, the shop found its rhythm again. We put the business on solid ground and renovated the space.

Today there are more of us. The team has grown, and the two who stood by us from the start are still at its heart.

Our own mark

We're fifty metres from the entrance to the Ancient Agora, and every day tourists fill the street looking for something to take home. Most of what they found was the same: big ATHENS and GREECE lettering on cheap caps. Souvenirs that, once you got home, failed to remind you why you bought them in the first place.

A gift, for yourself or someone you love, deserves better than that. So we made minimal embroidered caps: an understated Acropolis, good colours, simple lettering, quality you can feel. They took off.

Then we went a step further and invested in an embroidery machine, so anyone could make their cap truly personal. The first thing I ever embroidered, on a cold December morning, was a stoic phrase: tutto passa, "everything passes." It's still one of our bestsellers, stitched from the very same design file.

Today our workshop sits in the shop's basement, in the same rooms where my father and grandfather once stored their stock Embroidery has become the heart of Ararat. The best part is watching people watch it. They stand by the machine, mesmerised, as their words and designs come to life thread by thread, and their smiles grow. I still stand right there with them. I can't look away either.

Three generations, one building

Many things in the shop once belonged to my father and grandfather. My favourites stay in my office: their κομπολόγια (worry beads). A blue one that was my father's, and a red one that was my grandfather's.

My grandfather once slept on this roof and dreamed of something better. Beneath it today, that dream still keeps its doors open.

In here, every piece carries a little shadow of the past.

— R, third generation owner at Ararat