With his wide-set eyes and bright, toothy smile taking up more than half of his face, Sidney Sladen could be considered the Cheshire cat of Indian fashion. In reality, he is a shrewd business man who has taken his company in unexpected directions to stand out from the competition and build his eponymous brand into something he hopes will someday rival giant fashion houses like Chanel or Gucci. “I want it to be a world renowned brand,” says the designer, who at 31 is just getting started.
On a steamy (by New York standards) January day, Sladen sits sylphlike in a domineeringly large chair behind a large desk covered with magazines, paperwork, electronics, and cigarettes. Behind him, design sketches mingle with newspaper clippings showing his handiwork dressing the stars for premieres and award shows, and photos of dozens of models strutting down catwalks. His slender frame shows off a minimalist style of tight black jeans and low cut white t-shirt. Sladen is obsessed with white, claiming to own at least 50 white shirts. His other obsession? Dolce & Gabbana shoes, the only brand he'll wear and the only thing he ever asks for on his birthday. The biggest thing about him are his giant, celebrity-shielding sunglasses. Even to an outsider who knows nothing about him, he would look chic and interesting.
Like a popular teenage girl, Sladen receives texts and calls near constantly, pausing to answer each one with a series of non-verbal agreements or dissents interspersed with rapid Hindi. His office doubles as his factory, complete with workers sewing garments together, doing machine embroidery, a room jam-packed with fabric, and a handful of workers sitting at a long low table churning out astonishing hand-stitched embroidery. “Everyone comes to India for their embroidery,” Sladen says of the time consuming detailed work that India is famous for, “so whatever you see on a cocktail dress predominantly in any fashion week outside India, is done in India.” He has steadily built his brand over the last five years from a measly one-bedroom apartment to owning several boutiques, designing for films, and generally being considered the designer to the stars of South Indian cinema.
Sladen moved to his current base of operations, the city of Chennai, from Kenya with his mother and two sisters when he was eight-years-old but the itch to design began long before that. “[He] always showed an interest in fashion as a child,” said his mother, Merle Sladen who encouraged his passion and bought him his first sewing machine. “He would practice, just doing the curtains and things like that.” “I used to scribble clothes or design clothes in school behind my class books,” Sidney Sladen recalls of his childhood endeavors. Though she forced Sladen to earn a degree in something more practical, in case his fashion career fizzled, Merle Sladen always supported her son's ambitions and is now a part of his business, handling his company's accounts. Sladen, who calls her his rock, says it made sense to give her a job since she's around so much as it is, due to their close bond.
No comments:
Post a Comment