Nishat Khan is a Bangladeshi fashion designer and the founder of her own label 'Nishat Khan' – a couture line, co-designed by, and using the delicate craftsmanship of Bengali artisans. By supporting their immense creativity, their handwork as well as their ideas, this line seeks to prevent the extinction of fusion timeless elegance. This week, we catch up with Nishta Khan to find out about her thoughts on timeless fashion.
Where does your artistic influence come from?
For me, it’s basically nature. I feel it’s effortlessly beautiful and anyone with an imaginative mind can relate to it. For instance, birds, fish, insects. It gives away the perfect combination. For example, a Macaw. This bird itself has so many colours to it, that you don’t even need to think further on how to get a certain material dyed.
Why Haute couture? Why now?
Haute is basically a French term, it means elegant. And couture means sewing. Almost 80% of a haute couture item must be hand-made and also custom made, so imagine something that’s made only for your body and fits like a glove. An immense amount of details goes into one specific garment. For instance, one flower – to make it life-like, to make it detailed and to make it really pop-out.
Fashion has been described in many ways, what are we missing out on this conversation?
Just because it’s fashionable, doesn’t mean it may look good on one’s body. In order to be stylish, you must know what looks good on you.
What are the biggest obstacles you’ve faced while setting up in this journey?
Creating a solid team. Without a good team, it would’ve been very difficult to recreate my vision. The team members start from you, your tailor, and your karigar. Each member of the team makes a difference, because if one member fails to execute, the clients will not blame them, because they don’t know them, they know me, hence it’ll be all upon my name, my label.
What does your collection say about yourself?
How much I love my work! Every little thing I do is close to my heart, and if I’m dissatisfied with one work, it simply doesn’t go to the client.
So you had an exhibition last week, what was it all about?
This exhibition was all about bugs and flowers. Once again, nature came into the picture. Everything this time included details of nature in silver, and of course, A LOT OF BLING!
