Byblos takes its name from a hotel in St. Tropez, France. Since its inception in 1973, starting with a group of stylists, then engaging the Milanese Gianni Versace as a designer from 1975 to 1976, then Frenchman Guy Paulin, and finally Keith Varty from the Royal College of Art in London via a period in Paris at Dorothée Bis with Alan Cleaver. Varty and Cleaver became the personification of Byblos' objectives: a young line, international, with panache, and carefree, optimistic nonchalance. In the 1980s, the color palettes and relaxed resort-influenced informality of Cleaver and Varty for Byblos became a young lingua franca in fashion for the twentysomething and thirtysomething generations. -Fashion Encyclopedia.