Mariana Zaharoff Lagen

Mariana Zaharoff (Lagen), designer, artist, mother, grandmother and a woman whose remarkable life carried her from Athens to Jerusalem, Chicago and eventually the fashion houses and runways of Europe, passed away peacefully at her Chicago home on September 23, 2026, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She was 80 years old.

Mariana was born in Athens, Greece, on July 6, 1946, to Themistocles and Ekaterina. Her childhood was marked by loss almost from its beginning. When Mariana was only five years old, her mother died of leukemia. Still a little girl, Mariana was sent to Jerusalem to live with her maternal aunt, where she was educated before eventually returning to Greece.

Those early years would begin a life characterized by movement, reinvention and an extraordinary determination to make something beautiful from whatever life placed before her.

Mariana married young and came to Chicago, where she began raising a family far from the world of her childhood. But beneath the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood lived an artist who could not be contained.

She found her language in fabric.

From the basement of her Chicago-area home, surrounded by textiles, sketches, sewing machines and four children, Mariana began creating. What started quietly grew into a significant American fashion business.

She became known for her extraordinary work with textiles, particularly her hand-woven creations, and was once described in print simply and wonderfully as “Chicago’s master weaver.”

At the height of her career, Mariana Zaharoff designs were carried by hundreds of retailers throughout the United States, including Saks Fifth Avenue and I. Magnin. Her work attracted a celebrity clientele, and she was invited to design a wedding gown for Patti Davis, daughter of President Ronald Reagan.

But Mariana’s story was never a straight line.

Fashion was only one part of what Mariana gave her family.

She taught her children to recognize beauty. She introduced them to art, culture, travel, fabrics, color and the enormous world beyond their own doorstep. She possessed the rare ability to look at something not simply for what it was, but for what it might become.

That gift continues.

The name she once placed on clothing she created with her own hands would eventually be carried forward by her son George, who transformed Zaharoff into an international fragrance house.

Long before Zaharoff became his life’s work, however, it belonged to a mother creating beautiful things while her children watched.

Mariana was preceded in death by her parents, Themistocles and Ekaterina; her stepmother, Gethemene; and her brother Kyriakos. She is survived by her brother “Big” George, as well as many beloved nieces and nephews.

Above all, Mariana leaves behind the family that surrounded her at the end of her life.

She is survived by her four children: Nicholas Lagen and his wife, Anastasia; Tom Lagen and his wife, Jodi; George Zaharoff Lagen; and Katrina Bischoff and her husband, Jeffrey Kane Bischoff.

She is also survived by her grandchildren Ted; Maria and her husband, Gabe Wilner; Katerina and her husband, Pavlos Korkotas; Themistokles and his wife, Eleni; Warren Buckley Bischoff; and Mariana Lela Bischoff; as well as her great-grandson, Spyridon.

For a woman who lost her own mother when she was only five years old, there is something especially beautiful about the way Mariana’s life ended: at home, surrounded by the generations of family that came after her.

She began as a little girl in Athens.

She crossed borders and oceans.

She became a mother.

She became an artist.

She created.

She lost.

She rebuilt.

And she left something behind.

Her family will remember her complexity, her strength, her unmistakable sense of beauty and the enormous creative spirit that could transform a simple piece of fabric into something extraordinary.

That spirit lives on, in her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchild, in the things she created, and in the name Zaharoff that continues its journey around the world.

Mariana taught us that beauty could be created anywhere, even from a basement in Chicago.

And perhaps that is her legacy: she taught those who came after her to look at the world and imagine what it could become.

In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations to the Autism Association of Larissa in Greece, please click HERE to donate.