She is barely five feet tall, but designer Shilpa Chavan has achieved a stature much higher than that, in the tough world of fashion designing. No, not because she has worked in London with the acclaimed milliner Philip Treacy or got a scholarship to study hat-making at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, UK, but because Shilpa is a woman who believes in what she does and how. Way back in 1999, when she started out, she won the support of her SNDT, Mumbai professor Hemant Trivedi who asked her to design headpieces for Ms India contests. “That’s where my journey began, it was a tough ride on a bumpy road as people would make fun of me and say, ‘No one will buy this stuff. Whom are you designing for?’ But I was adamant and obsessed with the film My Fair Lady where the protagonist wears fabulous hats,” says Shilpa. The struggle didn’t end with the barbs. When Shilpa won a contract to design for Folio, Bengaluru, many thought her pieces were too futuristic for the Indian market to comprehend. But then came a media revolution and Shilpa got an opportunity to showcase her quirky pieces in fashion magazines, Internet and music channel shows. She soon got a job as a stylist with a magazine and model Meghna Reddy wore her smashing head gear and made a splash in the fashion circuit.
Few know that Shilpa is not just about her edgy headgear, but she also designs fun bracelets, hairbands (some with flowers), neckpieces (even in gold, silver or platinum). “The biggest challenge was for what I do to be accepted and now that I have crossed that hurdle I am thinking about doing a ‘pop up’ shop for a month — where you can come and buy everything you never thought you will get easily. My pieces are affordable as I use a lot of Swarovski and unconventional materials that will surprise you,” she says.
Starting with no money to reaching the place where Shilpa is in today is no mean feat, but what makes this unsung hero special is that nothing is machine-made, everything is painstakingly hand-crafted. “It is a piece that no one will have. I don’t make 100 pieces, just ten and I work from home with one assistant,” she adds. Tough to resist something so special, isn’t it?