Exclusive Interview with Shubhika Davda of Papa Don’t Preach

While the Indian fashion industry is largely fueled by a mammoth-sized demand for bridal wear, designers are nonetheless taking a bold step forward through an experimentation of contemporary silhouettes and designs. And by that we tend to divert our attention to inventive labels such as Papa Don’t Preach.

As the name suggests, Papa Don’t Preach designed by Shubhika Davda is a striking example of fashion gone ferociously creative with the use of innovative cuts, styles, embroidery techniques and play on colours. For the recent Lakme Fashion Week, the Indian brand unveiled ‘Twitterpater’, a collection inspired by love and the many underlying layers to the complex emotion.

“This collection is true to the Papa Don’t Preach aesthetics and design ideology and its expresses wonderment and the feelings of ecstasy that a girl in young love experiences. For which we have made use of metallic arrows, 3D metal hearts, threadwork and mirror acryilic work on all our accessories, shoes, bags and clothes,” explained Shubhika.

Already enraptured by her exuberant designs, we decided to pick at Shubhika’s mind and learn all about her brand – especially how she came up with the sassy name – and her thoughts on the challenging Indian fashion industry amongst other things.

Marie France Asia: How did you get started with fashion as a career?

Shubhika Davda: This may sound off tangent but this one is for the parents. Observe your child, before you pack them off to Bharatanatyam classes and cricket coaching classes, observe. What a child does in the first 10 years of his/ her life, in those empty spaces in the days, when he could be getting bored, is where his/ her natural inclination/ talent lies. Because as we grow old, we stop listening to ourselves and start getting moulded by exterior factors.

I made clothes for Barbies, and I glued fabric onto her feet to make them look like cool shoes. I cut off pockets from my 6 pocket cargo pants, attached a string and wore it as a sling bag to school. But then I grew up and did Bachelors in Mass Media and worked with DNA in my first year. In my second year in graduation, I got an opportunity from a local tailoring shop to buy it out as the owner was running deep in debts. I took it to my dad and he helped me make my first business acquisition. At the age of 19 I owned a tailoring shop with 3 tailors and one masterji (pattern cutter) and then there was no looking back.

Post-graduation I gave my best friend the responsibility to look after my shop for a year and i went to London College of Fashion to study fashion. In 2008 I came back and launched Papa Don’t Preach. Combining my two loves, Music and PAPA.

MFA: India tends to focus a whole lot on traditional wear and wedding outfits, does that pose a challenge to your label?

S. D.: After completing my fashion design studies from London College of Fashion, I came back to India in 2010 and launched Papa Don’t Preach by Shubhika (PDP) as a high street brand catering to the freshly minted 16 – 35 year-old fashion enthusiasts.

With strong influences from the London high street culture, I was always clear that PDP would mature into a brand that would design street wear clothing along with shoes, bags and accessories such that my client could walk out of the store with a complete look.

But looking at the business side of my work, I quickly realized that the money was actually in Indian bridal wear. That, teamed with a strong demand from a fiercely loyal clientele, PDP was pushed into designing a bridal couture and Indian wear line in 2012.

I now come out with 4 distinct lines a year in the high street wear, bridal couture, womenswear couture and accessories categories.

Creatively yes, it is mighty daunting and exhausting as I needed to put together a team that was good at producing both, Indian as well as western wear as well as the other, but financially it has given us a great cushion to go ahead and rest our business on the Indian wear and be experimental in the accessories and western department. Luckily India is such a huge and diverse market that there is a buyer ready for EVERYTHING.

MFA: What are your thoughts on the Indian fashion industry?

S. D.: It is unfortunately still quite disorganized, for young designers to break through and being recognized still requires a great deal of effort and you very often don’t know where to begin. But luckily there are platforms like Lakme Fashion Week that do help.

MFA: What is the one thing you want to see change in the industry?

S. D.: In India, the fashion industry is still not recognized by the Indian government as an industry and we hence don’t benefit from government schemes, tax exemptions etc that otherwise would help us grow monumentally and as a whole unit instead of a just a few designers doing well.

We also need to start teaching our design schools to make patterns in sizes true to the Indian body types as the Indian bodies are very unique from the European or American standard sizes. Indian design schools need to have their own Indian sizing charts.

MFA: What have been the biggest ups and downs in your career as a designer in India?

S. D.: Too many, but not any that are different from those that any young entrepreneur faces. Understanding the balance sheet, balancing creativity with good business sense, client servicing, daily glitches in running a large manufacturing unit.

But in a short span of time I have been appreciated and recognized by the industry and have been featured in top magazine bibles like Vogue, Grazia, Harper’s Bride, Elle etc. and have been worn by quite a few A-list Indian film industry stars so, I can’t really complain.

MFA: How would you describe your design aesthetic?

S. D.: I design for a girl, a woman, a lady. She is adventurous, fun loving, proudly individualistic and fearless; prefers drama over comfort, knows the importance of keeping that one extra safety pin in her bag, just in case. Who doesn’t match her lipstick to her clothes, and doesn’t take herself too seriously. She knows fashion is only something that compliments and doesn’t define her.

And that’s how I design; I design for her, for me and of course for you.

MFA: Where do you tend to seek inspiration from?

S. D.: It comes from anywhere, a song on the radio, a dialogue in a book, a feeling or a colour. But all my designs begin from embroideries – hand embroideries. I love mixing materials and colors to see what mood I’m feeling and then I just take it from there!