Occupation Textile Designer | Years active 1999–present | |
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Awards Lux Style Award for Achievement in Design (menswear) | ||
Shamoon Sultan is a Pakistani Textile designer, textile businessmen and founder of Khaadi, an international retailing fashion house which produces "handwoven" clothing material for men, women and children as well as home furnishings clothing line. Shamoon has won numerous industry awards including Lux Style Award for High Street Band thrice, Achievement in Fashion Design – Prѐt and has been nominated at different occasion in several categories at Lux Style Awards. Khaadi is regarded as the one of the best fashion-brand in Pakistan.
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Early life and education
Shamoon born to a Muslim family and did his graduation from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. He specialised in Handloom process of weaving. He married Saira who is also a fashion designer.
Early jobs and Khaadi
After graduation in 1996, Shamoon started working for Noorjehan Bilgrami for an year and few months with textile mill before resigning to set up his own clothing line. He describes his experience with Noorjehan as "perfectionist" and "learning". During that period he also did TV shows with Shahnaz Siddiq.
In 1997, Shamoon visited India for projects and saw craft prmotion through retails, he accounts, " I went to India a couple of times where I saw a lot of craft promoted through retail. There was absolutely nothing of the sort in Pakistan so I thought let's give it a try. I had no vision for the brand at that point; I just had faith in the product and what I was doing." In December 1997 he opened his first shop in Karachi's Zamzama and received wide spread acclaim in short-span of two weeks, talking to Dawn News Shamoon accounts that, "We started getting feedback from day one. We were stocked out in two weeks and we had to shut down the store."
Khaadi received wide spread acclaim for its revolutionary style of weaving cloth and it leads the store to become multi in less than two years of its inception and to introduced wide range of womenswear of Luxury Pret and lawn. As of 2015 company has opened more than 40 stores in eleven cities of Pakistan. Arshad Abdullah serves as an interior designer for Khaadi stores at Pakistan, UK and UAE. Besides clothing stores, company has total of five Khaadi Home stores which offers duvet covers, bed covers, bed sheets, cushion covers, tableware, wall clocks, etc.
In 2010, Khaadi expanded internationally by opening stores in the UAE first in Dubai and later in Abu Dhabi. In 2013, after global success of brand stores were planned in Saudi Arabia, Canada, Mexico, America, Australia, Malaysia and United Kingdom. The most successful international outlets of store are in UK. It has opened the biggest selling shop ever in Pakistan at Dolmen Mall Clifton, Karachi with total of 22,000-square-feet. Shamoon considered Zara as his inspiration and has described his likeness for "Paul Smith's style of retailing."
