Limelight, travels, red carpets and walking by the side of the most popular man in the country…life of a celebrity spouse has its own perks, especially when the celebrity is Fawad Khan.
Sadaf Fawad Khan talks about the role the man she’s married to plays in Silk.
Dubai
Limelight, travels, red carpets and walking by the side of the most popular man in the country…life of a celebrity spouse has its own perks, especially when the celebrity is Fawad Khan. Each time I come across Sadaf Fawad Khan, without fail, the dialogue from The Devil Wears Prada which goes, “Millions of girls would kill for this position” plays in my mind. To onlookers, her life would appear to be nothing short of perfect. Imagine, every morning she wakes up next to the most gorgeous looking man who is in absolute awe of her. But what impressed me about Sadaf is the fact that she wears her position with non chalance. She knows where to draw the line. She holds Fawad Khan close but not his success. She has a mind of her own with a clear cut vision for her brand. For someone who should be on the ball with the media, she’s been an absolute recluse and if it were not for her clothing brand Silk, I would have never discovered the entrepreneur in her.
I arrived at Ensemble Dubai at 6pm, when we were scheduled to meet. She arrived past 8.
“I am so sorry that I kept you waiting but Dubai traffic is unbelievable today,” she apologized profusely. “Actually Fawad and I were planning to come together but he is coming from Al Wasl and I am coming from JBR so I didn’t want to delay it,” he offered. Without further ado, I asked her about the scale of her brand and how far she wanted to take it.
“We are scaling it up. We started back in August 2012 and I was just doing casual pret back then,” Sadaf recalled. “Everyone was doing lawn and I wanted to offer premium fashion so I started with a Silk collection. The reason we called it Silk was because I wanted to keep it exclusive and did not want it to be a part of the lawn clutter. And like every business you evolve; you learn and you work towards its progress. We did not really stick to one line and we also ventured into fancier stuff so it has been a growing journey so far.”
Sadaf’s personal style statement is always very subtle and sophisticated. So who designs for her and how much of Silk reflects on her own ethos, I asked her?
“I personally design my own clothes but for the brand I cannot take the entire credit as I have a dedicated team,” she replied. “My aesthetic input is there and I approve the designs. We offer an extended range hence its not practical for me to design each and every outfit but I do take the final call on all the designs. It’s good to have a team as you also learn with them and that’s how you grow professionally as well.”
Was fashion something Sadaf was always interested in or was it a recent indulgence, I questioned.
“I have a long corporate career behind me,” she smiled. “I worked for Levis and Tetrapak and it was after working at Tetrapak that I decided to have my own brand and started working towards that. Of course, women have some natural inclination towards fashion and designs so maybe it was meant to happen eventually. I am personally looking after the brand and I am taking it further but I am doing it gradually. We have just had an addition in our family so a lot of my time goes to the younger one. Fawad has been extremely busy with his shoots and we prefer at least one of the parents to be around with the kids.”
Coming back to her brand Silk, I enquired if there was a theme that she has followed in this collection?
“We do follow trends but the underlying theme is very classic and conventional. The outfits cannot be translated as completely formal as each item is independent and individually priced which means that you can do a lot of mix and match with what you already own. Plus, we realize the constraints that whatever you wear goes on Instagram almost instantly so you obviously cannot have a separate outfit for each of your appearances. Once you’re photographed you want to look different next time around. Hence the idea of having a breakable line. For instance we have sari-pants in our new line; you can use the dupatta and the pants separately and so on.”
For those who are interested, Silk is available at Ensemble, Labels and PFDC in Pakistan. This is the first time the brand forayed into an international market.
“I wanted to test the market before stepping into it,” Sadaf explained. “We’ve gotten a really good response in Pakistan but now I want to expand the brand formally and direct it towards fancier stuff and Dubai is just the right market for anything fancy.”
Coming to the question everyone would be interested in, I asked Sadaf what Fawad’s role was in her clothing brand?
“Kafi zyada input hai,” she smiled. “I essentially run my designs by him. His feedback is absolutely important and he has that eye for detail. Sometimes when we are leaving for some event, he tells me why are you wearing this and why not that. So his approval is very important for me and that is the case with most women; the approval of the man in your life matters a lot. When the idea of this brand was conceived the reason we thought he should endorse it was not because he is a designer, but because he has that sensibility. We had a shoot in the morning and I had chosen this yellow outfit but he insisted I should wear something white and it looked just perfect. So the point is that his endorsement means that this is what he’d like his women to wear and it doesn’t mean that the endorser is necessarily the designer here. It’s very directional that way. Fawad himself isn’t a very flamboyant person when it comes to clothes. He is always very classy and in a way this reflects in what we design for women.”
You can’t go wrong when you have Fawad Khan endorsing your brand, that too on such a personal and tasteful level. I have a feeling Silk will do very well with women in Dubai! At this point I heard the crowd break out in hysterical over drive and I knew Fawad Khan must have arrived.
