We were lucky to catch up with Isha Pathak recently and have shared our conversation below.

Isha , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Designer and Manufacturing at Fallacie Apparel
Fallacie Apparel is a clothing brand started by artists for artists, I handle the whole designing and manufacturing end of all the products. While starting the brand I was confident in my designing abilities, having done my undergraduate degree in Fashion Design. But manufacturing and ensuring your vision comes to life is a whole different ball game. We always knew the quality of all our products needs to be top notch. Knowing what I know now I feel I would have maybe not wasted time in trying so many different manufacturers. We spent over a year traveling throughout India to find the highest quality fabric and printing. Given what I know now, I would focus on searching in a single city. I think the most essential skill is communication. One must know how to talk and communicate their ideas with manufacturers, and they should be clear with what they want. While running a clothing brand there is so much back and forth with manufacturers, that one has to have good communication skills, otherwise the products won’t look the way you would want them to.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have always been a creative person and knew I wanted to pursue the arts. When it came time to choose a career path, I picked Fashion Design because sewing was one of my favorite hobbies. After graduating, a friend approached me about his passion for starting a clothing brand. At the time, I was job hunting and never considered launching my own brand straight out of college; it seemed like an impossible dream. However, Fallacie turned out to be a dream come true, and I genuinely believe we have a fantastic team. It’s a joy to work on each project. In the beginning, it felt like we had taken on more than we could handle. One of the biggest challenges we faced was finding manufacturers. I would simply Google “clothing manufacturers in my city” and cold call or email anyone I could find. After about a hundred such calls, we finally found the perfect manufacturers. My advice to others is not to hesitate to pick up the phone and call. What’s the worst that can happen? They say no? Then move on and call the next number.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think what society can do to support artists is to stop taking them less seriously and stop taking the field of arts less seriously. When I shared my desire to pursue a degree in the arts with some friends and family, many of them dismissed it, saying it doesn’t pay well and is only suitable as a hobby. However, thanks to my amazing parents and brother, who always supported me, I am now doing what I love and have never been happier. Designing clothes and seeing my vision come to life brings me immense joy.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Like I mentioned before, I think finding the right manufacturers truly shows our resilience and patience. I am not joking when I say I have called at least a 100 people, if not more. I remember for about 2-3 months thats all I would do. I would call different manufacturers, and if they said they don’t do small numbers then I’d ask them if they knew someone who did and sometimes they would give me a contact. I would then call that person. It seemed like an endless cycle. But ultimately we did find the right people and it all worked out.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fallacie.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fallacieapparel/
• Other: Personal Website: https://www.ishaa.work/

Image Credits

Photography and Editing: Vedant Kothari
Models: Isabel Chacon, Markiey B, Devashish and Kane
Assistant: Charlie Walker