{"id":1486,"date":"2018-04-27T01:52:57","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T00:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/insider.utelier.com\/?post_type=features&p=1486"},"modified":"2019-08-02T09:09:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-02T08:09:13","slug":"maes-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fashioninsiders.co\/features\/meet-the-maker\/maes-london\/","title":{"rendered":"MAES London: No job is too big or too small"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My name is Diana Kakkar. I am originally from\u00a0the north of\u00a0India, but I\u2019ve been away for over 10 years,\u00a0having lived and worked in Sydney, Manchester, New York and now London where I\u2019ve been for over seven years. I love the fashion scene here and it definitely feels like my home.<\/p>\n
The first outfit I designed was for my 12th<\/sup> birthday party. I bought fabric and teamed with a local seamstress to get the right fit. After this I dabbled with the design until I\u2019d started college, however, my family felt fashion was not a proper career so I majored in economics instead. Once I\u2019d graduated from college I convinced my parents that, armed with my business degree, I could learn fashion technicalities and create a career out of it. It was a tough chat, but it paid off!<\/p>\n I studied at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi, which is India’s top fashion school. Looking back I feel I approached fashion with a sense of maturity because of my business degree. Even then, for me, fashion was always more than just designing clothes.<\/p>\n One of the great things about my course was that it focused quite heavily on creating garments. This really helped me to understand and appreciate how a garment is put together.<\/p>\n That was over 10 years ago, and since then I have worked with both menswear and womenswear brands.<\/p>\n Before I set up our\u00a0fashion manufacturing studio<\/a>\u00a0MAES London, I was managing the atelier at high-end womenswear designer ERDEM<\/a>.<\/p>\n Each season Erdem pushes himself and the team to create a collection that\u2019s even better than the season before so I was definitely challenged.<\/p>\n He\u2019s so inspiring. I learned a lot there and I’m proud of what the team at Erdem and I achieved together under his leadership.<\/p>\n I made the decision to launch my own manufacturing studio as recently as September last year (2017).\u00a0 The ERDEM team and I had just completed our SS18 LFW show and I felt a real sense of achievement.<\/p>\n The idea for the fashion manufacturing studio popped into my head. I did my research, found the perfect space for the studio and found a business partner who believed in the same vision as mine.<\/p>\nDid you have fashion background prior to launching your fashion manufacturing studio?<\/h3>\n
What was the last role you worked as and where? What did you like about what you used to do?<\/h3>\n
What made you launch your own manufacturing studio? When did the idea come to your mind and why did you prefer to do that rather than staying employed?<\/h3>\n