We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Alavia Khawaja. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Alavia below.

Alavia, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.

Taking a risk is always scary, especially when it’s personal art. The biggest risk I took was actually putting my business out there in itself. When I first started my clothing business, I did nottt want anyone to know that it had anything to do with me. There are so many “what if’s”. “What if my designs suck, or worse, what if I genuinely liked my designs but it turns out everyone else thinks they suck?”, “what if it isn’t original enough”, “what if nobody buys anything”, “what if people think I’m a try-hard”, “what if everyone watches me fail?”.

Due to these anxiety-driven questions, I didn’t claim my business as mine for over 4 years! As you can imagine, sales were not great, other than a few hits on Etsy specifically. It left me feeling unmotivated, but I decided I would try and see what happened if I posted myself wearing the clothes on social media. By chance, my video went viral on TikTok, and people started asking me where I got the handmade sweater I had been wearing, but I knew if I wanted real results, I had to be personal.

Collecting all the courage I could, I created another video wearing my designs, and this time told everyone that it was MY business, and MY art. Sales started to seriously pick up, and feeling more confident, I own my brand with everything in me. You just need to take that first step.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Hi y’all! If you don’t know me, my name is Alavia and I’ve been crafty all my life, always drawing, designing phone cases, and sewing my own skirts. I lean towards any form of expression as a photographer, graphic designer, model and teach yoga.

I am very passionate about connecting with one’s roots and preserving your identity, which gave way to my clothing brand. Although starting out, and at it’s core, my brand encourages Pakistanis and Filipinos to rep their culture with pride, I want to go bigger and encourage everyone to embrace the duality in themselves. As a mixed girl, it’s always been a struggle juggling both aspects of my identity and utilizing the Duality logo for my brand, that is the main statement. My brand is a safe space for everyone and I want to make sure that is communicated, which brings the birth of my Intersectional Feminism tee.

Whatever duality means to you, as it presents itself differently in all of us, I want every single person to be confident in being able to present that to the world as well.

How did you build your audience on social media?

My following for my business itself is very small, but the best advice I can give is to be PERSONAL. My personal account is built from posting and interacting with people authentically. I usually only follow people I know or have been interacting with constantly. My business’ social itself makes sales regardless of the small following on Instagram because the main place people find the business is through my personal social medias. The business account just features the clothes and how one could wear them, but from my personal account, people get to know me, and therefore get a better glimpse behind the brand. My first 30 followers on my business account were all friends, I grew to 440 after I started talking about my brand on my personal TikTok.

If you’re not utilizing your personal and just sticking to the business, show behind-the-scenes. People love seeing the inspo, the progress, the packaging, the PROCESS. Be relatable and tell a story through your business, and that’s how people will love and genuinely support you.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

For my business, I actually didn’t need a ton of capital to start. As I stated earlier, I have always been very crafty and artistically inclined. I already had Photoshop, which I had been using since I was 12 and used it to create designs. My first Pakistan Sweater, I bought two different sweaters from the clearance section of Macy’s, tore them apart, and utilizing my existing sewing skills, I put it all together as the sample. I got my design printed on the sweater, and using my Canon T3i that I was using for my photography hobby, and took pictures to put online.

When starting out, you tend to be a one-person team, and it really helps that I had existing skills in all the areas I needed. When you first start your business, you might want to pick up a few skills before you’re ready to hand tasks off to other people as your business grows. Remember to start small along the lines of your existing expertise and build off that.

Contact Info:

• Website: Cre8Store.com/Shop-Datu-Kutti
• Instagram: Instagram.com/DatuKutti
• Youtube: Youtube.com/c/AlaviaKhawaja
• Other: TikTok: TikTok.com/@Empress.AloeVera Personal Instagram: Instagram.com/Empress.AloeVera

Image Credits
Alavia Khawaja & Marr Aragon