Part I: Between Two Worlds

Part I: Between Two Worlds

Growing up in Haiti, life followed a strict rhythm — what I call the three L’s: lekòl, lakay, legaliz.
School. Home. Church.
Nothing else existed in between.

I attended Catholic school, where Sunday church wasn’t a choice — it was mandatory. Time was controlled before I ever understood what freedom meant. There were no real weekends, no days off. Even summer wasn’t a break.

During school vacations, my parents enrolled me in vakans — hiring a teacher to go over the books and lessons I would face the following school year. Preparation was constant. Rest felt undeserved.

The only shift in routine came when my mother opened her first beauty supply store. But that break came with responsibility. Every summer, I worked there from 9 to 5. The store became another classroom — one that taught discipline, survival, and sacrifice. I watched entrepreneurship up close before I had language for it.

Play was rare. I was seldom allowed to run freely with friends or play pickup soccer in the neighborhood. This, even though from toddlerhood through my teenage years, I trained in a soccer academy. Soccer was allowed only inside structure — never as escape, never as rebellion.

Looking back now, I understand the tension I lived in.
I was raised between discipline and imagination, duty and desire, entrepreneurship and creativity.

That tension never left me.
It shaped how I see the world.
It shaped how I design.

Maison Demar was born in that space — where structure meets resistance, where control collides with expression. This is not nostalgia. This is foundation.

This is where it starts.