The talented duo, and the brains behind one of Karachi’s newest shoe brands, Illume, Faiza Rehmani and Mahera Khanzada share some of their unique designs and how they ended up in the business of shoe making
How/when did you become interested in shoes?
Faiza: I’ve always been obsessed with shoes, and when I moved back to Pakistan I realised that it was quite difficult to find trendy, comfortable shoes here. This love for shoes, coupled with the fact that Pakistan has such a wealth of quality leather and skilled craftsmen, convinced me that I wanted to start a shoe brand.
Mahera: While I was at Indus Valley, I did my final year thesis project on handcrafted shoes. I had been interested in shoes before the project, but learning about all that goes into creating a handmade pair, really made me fall in love with shoes.
What are some of your favourite pairs from your collection?
Faiza: The Bow Tie, Silver Toe and Frou-Frous.
Mahera: Antique Rose, Frou-Frous and Emma Emerald.
What’s the inspiration behind them?
Faiza: We like to look up current trends and try to incorporate them into our designs. The Frou-frous are a good example of this, because frills are everywhere these days.
Mahera: Most of the shoes we create are designed based on what we ourselves would love to wear. They are inspired by our personal style and in a sense are reflections of us.
Is there any pair you are emotionally attached to and why?
Faiza: We put our heart and soul into creating each one of our shoes, so I’m quite attached to all of them; but if I had to pick one, it would be our Bloom sandal. We went through so many different iterations of it, designing the flowers and picking just the right colours and leather that it took us nearly four months just developing it.
Mahera: Each and every creation is special. Every design develops at its own pace from the point an idea is conceived, sampled, refined and finally executed. It’s hard to not get emotionally attached to every design you’ve paid special attention to from start to finish.
Tell us about how you went about establishing your brand and how it came into being.
Faiza: We wanted the brand to stand for positivity and for the name to convey its overall philosophy of bringing joy to our customers and treating our craftsmen fairly. That’s how we came up with the name Illume, which literally means to “light up”. We both liked the ring of it and thought that it also expressed the idea of adding that spark to your outfit with our shoes.
Is there anything you have in mind that you would like to create in the future?
Mahera: We are looking forward to introducing heels for our next collection as well as some more formal sandals.
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