“In­di­an cloth­ing tells us a sto­ry of his­to­ry. Our cloth­ing com­ple­ments the wear­er, giv­ing a win­dow in­to the per­son­al­i­ty and tra­di­tions even be­fore one may speak, our cloth­ing can in­tro­duce us,” as shared by Ne­ha Ka­ri­na Dawar.

A lo­cal de­sign­er, grad­u­ate from the Caribbean Acad­e­my of Fash­ion and De­sign at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CAFD), Ne­ha Ka­ri­na Dawar, from child­hood, al­ways had a pas­sion for de­sign­ing her own the­atre per­form­ing out­fits and when asked where she got it, lit­tle did they know, she de­signed it.

Ne­ha is a Kathak dancer trained in Jaipur Gha­rana un­der Vid­ha Lal. With fam­i­ly ties in In­dia, Ne­ha forged a bal­ance be­tween her aes­thet­ic, merg­ing the Caribbean and In­di­an/mid­dle east­ern cul­tures seam­less­ly. She was in­tro­duced to de­sign­ers from re­gions with­in In­dia and she did not take much time in cul­ti­vat­ing this aes­thet­ic. Fol­low­ing short cours­es in Em­broi­dery, Styling, Colour The­o­ry and Brand De­vel­op­ment in In­dia, the brand Ne­ha Ka­ri­na was birthed.

Ne­ha Ka­ri­na re­flects a vi­sion for Caribbean-In­di­an lux­u­ry fash­ion. In Ju­ly 2015 Ne­ha de­vel­oped the brand Ne­ha Ka­ri­na be­ing one of the Caribbean firsts to man­u­fac­ture “In­di­an Cou­ture Cloth­ing” lo­cal­ly with­in shores of Trinidad and To­ba­go, fol­lowed by the suc­cess­ful open­ing of the first flag­ship store at Hilton Trinidad.

Ne­ha Ka­ri­na, a brand of over 7 years has many sig­nif­i­cant ac­com­plish­ments aligned to the jour­ney. A keen ad­vo­cate of Women Em­pow­er­ing Women, Ne­ha has brought to fruition, many in­spir­ing cam­paigns, es­pe­cial­ly around In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. Be­ing the Na­tion­al Di­rec­tor for the Miss Glob­al In­ter­na­tion­al for Trinidad and To­ba­go; as well as Miss | Mrs | Teen In­dia World­wide Pageant for Trinidad and To­ba­go, her deep love for Fash­ion, Arts and the Caribbean cul­ture is shared to the world.

WE asked Ne­ha Ka­ri­na, “What is your ad­vice to up­com­ing women en­tre­pre­neurs?”

“It’s a hard road, there may be many stum­bling blocks, but the best way to move for­ward is al­ways stay ground­ed, stay hum­ble and be con­fi­dent no mat­ter what the bar­ri­ers are. Keep re­mem­ber­ing the sky is nev­er the lim­it, we are ca­pa­ble of go­ing be­yond. You are lim­it­less po­ten­tial, so set your goals for the stars. If you fall don’t give up, there is so much be­yond the stars you will dis­cov­er. I’m still aim­ing to shoot be­yond the stars and one day I will dis­cov­er and so will you.”

For more in­for­ma­tion on NE­HA KA­RI­NA:

Tel: (868) 621-5907 l Web: www.ne­haka­ri­na.com