Studio CASA 9 is a refreshing take on contemporary women’s wear handcrafted with elements of myriad colours, modern silhouettes and interesting textures that are designed truly for the experimental souls. Started by designer duo- Benita & Nikita for an irresistible urge to create unconventional and contemporary fashion, Studio CASA 9’s spirit resides in the diversity of designs that mirror culture, passion, creativity and luxury at the same time. What makes us stand apart in the crowd is our eye to detail where we treat every outfit like a piece of art and we want each and every CASA 9 clients to be confident and happy in the product they chose to adorn their personality.
There is a saying that, “nothing succeeds like success and nothing fail like a failure”. Having tasted the seeds of failure 10yrs back; this is my 3rd venture now & we at CASA 9 are extremely determined to make this a huge success. I started this label 6 yrs back where I used to operate from my car for almost 6 months and could work only for 2-3 hrs a day as my baby was just 2yrs old then.
Post 6 months, I realized that my client base is growing stronger and hence in 2013, May I for seeing this can be escalated to next level & so I rented a small garage in the bylanes of Portuguese church. My sister Benita, joined me in and we designed a well-structured business module, to begin with hiring staff, purchasing raw materials, sewing machines, all the required accessories to manufacturing outfit, searching an appropriate brand name , so Casa9 in Spanish means house 9, which was the roots of our design lessons, parallelly we started designing, and creating our 1st collection, which was very well received & we were sold out completely in the first month itself and got plenty of repeat orders . This definitely boosted our confidence and with very strong support from our whole family, we started going further ahead, planning new avenues, new targets, new deals.
There was no looking back thereafter. We kept on crossing each milestone with some new lesson that shaped us and our brand to a new level. Then we started supplying to multi-designer stores & participating in exhibitions. 5yrs down the line we were supplying to 15 stores and almost did 40-45 exhibition pan India.
We also experienced rough times when with changing times, stereotype men are being very supportive and accepting of the fact of having successful women in the corporate world ,but being in the fashion industry , most of the skillful labourers like tailors and embroidery workers especially , who come from unprivileged class of society where their thought processes are not fine-tuned to city standards, so for them taking orders from women bosses is not as easy, woman boss speaking in higher and stronger tone to them ,easily breaks their morals and hurts their big fat male ego . We took this aspect also in our stride and learnt the diplomatic politically correct language to deal with such situations.
Our client base grew almost 300% and so did our staff. 2018, was a very remarkable year when we decided to shift our base to a bigger studio and a more efficient and organized one at one of the city’s prime location. Our area of Expertise has a large assortment in which some of the best we do are in Trousseau Wear, Bridal Wear, Concept Dressing, Personal Grooming, Styling for Men/Women, reviving your old attires with a completely new and refreshing look. We also customize as per individual demands and try to satiate the needs in a perfect manner.
Designers and fashion professionals have now realized that they serve an audience who is active on social media. These customers have creative concepts of their own and are willing to experiment and so it’s easy to convince them today with new fancies and frills of our every new collection.
One of our main goals will be to empower womanhood, be a role model to other growing young girls, make your own mark and make a difference to the society, set new standards and not follow the race blindly aping someone else. Be original, and yourself.
Today’s woman is as educated, skilful, and intelligent as equal as her male counter, having said that she is not only capable of being successful in any field of the profession she chooses to be in, she makes sure her contribution makes a remarkable difference. Hence, yes it’s been a long journey full of ups & downs, but definitely worth every moment of it.
The writer is Nikita Vira Kaushik, Co-Founder and Fashion Designer of Studio CASA 9’ (Views Are Personal)
