Christian Louboutin had once said, "A woman can be sexy, charming, witty, or shy with her shoes."
While that's true if you wish to be original fun and quirky, by the sheer power of your footwear choice, one brand that you might want to check out at the Lakme Fashion Week is Misfit Panda.
Misfit Panda, a home-grown premier footwear brand, that is making its solo debut at the Lakme Fashion Week on February 3, 2019, is one of those unique Indian shoe brands that promises comfort with style, and at a price which you can afford without selling your kidneys. Juveca Panda started her high-street footwear brand in 2017 has so far not only shown great creativity in her designs but also a good understanding of the Indian market.
As Juveca sat down for an interview with News18.com she looked completely relaxed, although she confessed that the last few days of preparation for LFW has been quite a whirlwind with endless last-minute tasks that sometimes kept her occupied till dawn.
"I am a little nervous for my show, but it is a good kind of nervous, the excited kind," she laughed.
Her collection, perched neatly on the makeshift walls covered with shoe-box patterned wallpaper in stall number 45 at Lakme Fashion Week looked classic yet quirky. That's the signature of Misfit Panda's designs -- they are a fun twist on classic comfortable shoes that can upscale any outfit.
The collection that she will display at the fashion week on Sunday embodies a classic Italian summer holiday reinvented with urban coolness. While some of the shoes that will be showcased have beautiful 3D floral embroidery on them, like butterflies, leaves, and intricate vines, other shoes are cool sneakers with a swirl of contrasting colours -- eye-popping metallic mixed with understated pastel tones.
The collection named 'The Secret Garden' is inspired by Juveca's travel from Milan to Lake Como, in Italy.
She said that during her ride, she noticed how the beauties of nature co-existed in harmony with the arts that humans made to express themselves. She was mesmerised by how the labyrinth of floral vines beautifully complimented the graffiti on the walls and although each of these beauties is very different and individualistic, they co-existed in a beautiful melange.
"I was thinking how do I put this all down, and then I said to myself, 'Wait, I can't explain all this on paper, let me put it on my shoes."
And, so she did.
Juveca said she is very happy that badminton champion, PV Sindhu, will be walking the ramp for the first time to display her shoes.
"I am very excited about the shoes she will be wearing. She will be wearing a shoe that mixes athleisure with a very feminine style," added Juveca.
In about a year, Juveca has managed to carve out an identity for her brand and that can truly be a challenging task. Indians, who are often obsessed with a status symbol, like to buy brands that they can name drop. But, Juveca said that because she chose a quirky brand name, that isn't typically Indian, she easily found a way to get around that problem.
The brand name 'Misfit Panda' also defines Juveca in many ways, she confessed. Her last name is Panda. "It's a quirky cool last name. I think in all my life, it has been a big part of my identity. Everyone eventually ends up calling me Panda or some version of it, instead of my actual first name," she said.
While she hated being associated with 'lazy, chubby things like Panda' as a kid, as she grew older she learned to accept her last name, just like she learned to accept and own the fact that she is a 'misfit'.
"Misfit has mostly had a lot to do with how I have been in my life and my experiences. I have never really been in any school for more than three years. So, I have always moved around. I have been to India, then I moved to England and then to America. When I came back home after 10 years, I always felt that I was very different because I lived away for so long. I felt like a misfit," she said.
"I initially thought misfit had a bad connotation, it meant that you didn't fit in with everybody else. But, as I started working and growing into my own, I realised that it is good to be an individual person with your own way of thinking, your own creativity," she added.
One of the biggest reasons why Misfit Panda is steadily making its name in such a short time is Juveca's acute business sense.
"I wanted to do something different that resonated with the modern woman because why should we have to look to international brands to buy these kind of funky shoes? Why can't we have a homegrown brand? And, that is where the idea came about," she said.
Juveca said that the USP of her brand is the comfort because of which people from age 13 to age 65 buy her shoes. "We put extra insole padding in the shoes," she said.
Another good thing is that all her shoes are very affordable and they are available online, which allows her to reach out to the tier two cities as well, where people have a lot of disposable income but no place to buy quality shoes from.
"When you are having a good hair day, you wake up in the morning and you are like, 'okay, I am feeling confident today'. I feel like a good pair of shoes really do that to you, so everyone should be able to afford cool, funky shoes. Everyone wants to look nice, and I wanted to make that available to everyone. Everyone should feel special. They can all dress that way and they don't need to spend like 500 - 600 dollars on one pair of shoes," said Juveca.
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