Working with core tenets of comfort, contemporary allure, luxury, bespoke charm and handcrafted designs, shoe designer Aprajita Toor’s latest collection, Kaleidoscope, is a canvas of myriad hues and crafts from Gujarat.
Inspired by colours and elements from the vibrant cultures of the local tribes there, the line explores a range of styles from heels to flats with tactile enhancements such as leather, colourful silk thread embroideries and lustrous mirror embellishments.
In terms of textiles, Kaleidoscope uses semi-raw silk along with premium Nappa leather.
The mirror embellishments have been complemented by silk thread work.
Says Toor, “India is a vibrant nation full of colours and techniques developed over centuries by skilled craftsmen. With the advent of technology, age-old traditions are slowly being lost to more commercial considerations.
While exploring different traditional crafts of India, I was surprised to see how easily traditional skills, carried ahead by generations, were being lost, as the newer generation was unwilling to learn these crafts due to limited opportunities. Kaleidoscope is yet another initiative, like our earlier ones, to bring to the fore another beautiful craft.”
When creating a new design, Toor’s muse is the modern Indian woman.
Not essentially modern in her attire alone but modern in her thoughts, who understands her needs and is willing to experiment with something that is old fashioned in some ways and path-breaking in others.
“Yet again, Kaleidoscope’s muse is a woman willing to experiment with colours and designs which have cultural roots and yet soar into the contemporary skyline mixing tradition with high street fashion.”
On what prompted her to get into the world of shoe design, Toor recalls that while researching traditional textiles, she realised that there were very few options for customised footwear in India.
“Just as one size does not fit all in clothes, similarly each individual has feet that cannot be fit into bulk manufactured footwear. We may not realise it, but even our two feet could sometimes be of different sizes. Ill-fitting clothes are not as troublesome as ill-fitting shoes can be to spend a day in.”
She set up a footwear designing and manufacturing unit in her own home in 2012 with just three karigars and just eight years later, her design studio is spread over multiple units where 20 craftsmen sourced from various corners of India give shape to an ever-evolving portfolio of bespoke footwear.