Shehla Chatoor is a passionate young designer, who came from USA as a business student, but discovered her immense talent in the field of art and designing by fate, and after 15 years, here she is, a creative, well established and an award-winning designer.
Shehla who has always been associated with sophisticated luxury has now come up with her own solo show ‘Nur-e-Elahi’ that will be paired with Sophia Webster shows from the latest S/S18 collections.
“If my brides are about to go abroad for their shoe purchases, I have often recommended Sophia Webster. It’s uncanny that now that very brand is going to be featured on the catwalk with all my designs.”
“I had been communicating with the brand for some time now,” explains Shehla. “I had been designing my collection ‘Tresor’ which featured a lot of florals and butterflies and I just shared the images with them, simply because I felt that they went so well with the Sophia Webster aesthetic. They responded and said that they really liked my work.”
“Nothing really happened at the time but then I began working on my upcoming collection ‘Nur e Alaleh’ and I sent them images of some of my inspirations. They were interested and we started considering a collaboration via a lookbook that they sent to me. At the time, they were putting up installations at London Fashion Week but right afterwards they sent the shoes on to me. They just go very well with my design sensibility and I feel proud that Sophia Webster’s first-ever collaboration with South East Asia is going to be at my show.”
For a brand as prestigious as Sophia Webster to take an interest in a Pakistani show indicates that there is so much more that local designers can achieve. Sidestepping political and economic barriers, they can simply reach out to the world via social media and show everyone how good they are –for this is precisely what Shehla Chatoor did.
