Swatimodo: January 2008

The elfin shoe12 Jan 2008, 0000 hrs IST,TNN
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Swati Mehrotra (TOI Photo)

For Swati, fashion begins at the feet. And while most girls her age are only admiring Carrie Bradshaw’s gargantuan shoe collection, she is conjuring up designer shoes from scratch under her label Swati Modo. With a production unit in Agra, and the help of leather specialists and gifted craftsmen, she transforms leather, fur, suede, handicrafts, stones and fabrics into quirky footwear. What sets Swati’s enterprise apart is that she employs an Orthotics firm to provide specialised solutions for people with biomechanical foot problems. She takes measurements and creates a mould for each foot. The minimum time taken to create each pair is eight days and the pricing starts at Rs. 800. "With customisation, you have the liberty of working with anything you want. The production time and price would vary accordingly," she explains. Training ground: Led by her passion to design, Swati wound up at the Footwear Design & Development Institute (FDDI). She admits that it was happenstance. "I wanted to be a part of the design industry but felt that there were too many fashion designers on the block. Footwear design seemed new and exciting," she says. So is this just as exercise in being "different'? "No, I had it somewhere in the back of my head. My father used to say that our personalities are reflected in our shoes. He’d make us obsessively polish them before school. Somehow, that inclination lingered on." Overcoming hurdles: Was it difficult to sink her teeth into a new industry with no family background? "Through my three-year course, I was repeatedly told that this is a male dominated field. The ratio of women to men in the classrooms was around 1:6," she shares. But she did work with a large export house for a while, when she moved to Agra after college. "Agra is a leather hub. It was a conscious decision to seek an internship there. The sad thing is, in India, shoe designers are called pattern cutters. In large manufacturing units, designers are merely part of the assembly line there is no emphasis on design," she laments. All about shoes: Swati cites the legendary shoe designers Manolo Blahnik and Salvatore Ferragamo as her idols. She stresses on the changing requirements of feet as per the weather and lifestyle. "Wearing heavy leather boots in a humid city like Mumbai is ridiculous. I’d designed a pair which lends a Fall/Winter feel but is partially made of permeable fabric so that the feet can breathe." "Ferragamo created a revolution of sorts and his strong emphasis on ergonomic design is something I admire," admits Swati. She suggests staying away from pointy-toed high heels. Currently, Swati is planning to concentrate on the local market. She has plans to set up studios in Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata. "People in the industry don’t believe customisation can take off in a big way. I want to break that notion with a strictly professional approach." With that, Swati surely isn’t one to take baby steps.