Slow fashion in fast times | Instep

he wonderful thing about living in the golden age of doom scrolling is that when the doom scrolling gets you down, you can add to cart and buy your feelings away. We kid. Get therapy. Talk
to a friend. Pet a dog or squidge up a cat, or plant a pet-repelling garden to keep your local felines and their many offspring out. We’re all living a collective Orwellian nightmare and need every scrap of help we can get.

Speaking of scraps: sustainable fashion!

One of the trends we do live for is any chance to buy local. To be very honest, if it were local, ethical, but not entirely recyclable, we’d buy it. Wouldn’t you rather give your money to a local small business than a large fast fashion chain that buys and produces in your country/region and then sells back to you? Don’t you love it when the stranger in the paper gets preachy with you on a Sunday morning?

One of the two local brands selling online that we are excited about is Sifur by Sania. Their cute chaand taara print on white caught our attention around 14^th August, and we had to find out more. Apart from the minimal, evergreen, organic aesthetic Sifur seems to be shooting for, we really liked how the pieces we looked at had a story.

See Sifur by Sania featured on pages 32 & 35.

Sania Asad, the force behind this brand confesses her own love for vintage clothing is what brought Sifur around.

“I got into thrifting and turning my old clothes into new pieces,” she says. Sania’s personal aesthetic is very visible in her designs, and her preferences seep in too.

“For Sifur, I usually stick to natural fabrics like cottons, natural silks, or try to recycle fabric. I do not enjoy wearing a lot of synthetic fabrics myself so I try to make things out of material I would wear myself,” she says.

Sifur by Sania offers both gorgeous saris and co-ords, as well as tops and interesting dresses. The motifs, embellishment, and trims are minimal to zero, and the fabric and cut speaks for itself.

“For techniques I am quite drawn towards dip dyes, block prints and minimal embroidered details,” says Sania. “I also like using buttons a lot. Just using the local craft of Pakistan as much as possible.”

Ultimately, she does want to be as ethical and inclusive in the designs she creates and the way in which they are sold.

“My business goal is to hopefully create pieces that people would get the best out of,” says Sania, “and also to be truly inclusive.

To really practice the custom sizing that we offer because that is something that is important to me as a designer.”