Meet the Indian designer who gave charisma to Lady Gaga

CHENNAI: While Indian designer Javed Memon prefers to maintain a low-profile, his creations however are taking the centre-stage globally. With clients ranging from Lady Gaga to the US First Lady Michelle Obama, Javed Memon's embroidery house Charisma has its hands full catering to the likes of Armani, Versace and Vera Wang to name a few.
Long before Lady Gaga decided to don a Margiela creation – embroidered by Charisma - for her music video "Applause," the Mumbai-based fashion house has been producing intricate embroidery panels for top-notch luxury houses, including Stella McCartney, Saint Laurent Paris, Karl Lagerfeld.
"Lady Gaga is just one of a long list of illustrious celebrities who have worn a Charisma piece, handcrafted in India. The recent Golden Globes had Calista Flockhart of Ally Mc-Beal donning an Andew GN gown for which we had created the front panel," says Javed.
Charisma's journey started in 1990, when Javed’s father Iqbal Memon opened a men's garment business. After finishing college, Javed joined the family business but ventured into women's wear - targeting first clients in the Middle East markets before expanding to Europe.
"We found a lot of clients interested in high fashion embroidery, which was India's strong point so we diversified into high fashion beading gradually over a period of time. I was always intrigued by men's fashion growing up around fabrics and men's garments. As a youngster, I would spend my hours after college at the factory," he reminisces.
A regular invitee at fashion runways in Milan, Paris and New York, Javed says he prefers to stay low-key. "I have personally been to a few fashion shows....our embroidery business is a very sophisticated field. Clients in Europe treat embroidery as a work of art and look at minute details," he says.
Charisma Fashions has always been engaged in the business of export garments since the day his father started it. It was Javed who decided to shift the focus to high-end fashion and started catering to European clients. "In 2007, we opened our US operations and set up a New York office in 2013," he says.
About feedback from his celebrity clients. "Well, they are not our direct clients. They are clients of designers we work with on a regular basis. So through the grapevine I'd say that the response has always been good," he says.
"Normally the process of selection for runways is that they are loaned by the designers to help boost their name. A celebrity usually has a lot of options to choose for what they'd wear on the red carpet," he adds.
About his favourite embroidery stitch, Javed says he likes to use a lot of zardosi work. "But clients are becoming more price conscious and with the ease of technology and machine-made embroidery, the competition is getting tougher for handcrafted work likes ours. Pricing also is crucial as we want to give it back to our more than 150 employees."