Pratha Mandwal

The best career advice I received was from a photographer in India when I was working in the film industry. He told me that when you're on set with 50 people and there will always be conflicts with actors or whoever, you should always remember what the big picture is. The point of the whole shoot is for this one person to represent your collection correctly and nicely. You need to put your ego and your anger to the side and remember that your work should be presented correctly. I think for many people in professional work, we all have our issues, and even in the current climate in this world with a lot of issues going on, if we all learn to put our egos aside, then we can all have a more peaceful outcome. Another piece of professional advice that really resonates with me is to just trust and do the work. Trust that what you're doing is correct, have confidence in your work, and the work will show for itself. Just be confident, put in the work, and the work will be fine. These may not be as monumental as some advice people give, but these small things help you do better, I feel.

I think for women, many people will try to take your voice over the years. You have to connect back with your voice and then do what you want to do. Women are always told what they should be doing, but they need to decide what is good for them, and then find courage, or seek courage, and then do it. They'll be so much happier that way. And if you cannot find it yourself, then go find a mentor who can guide you and find that courage. Not everyone has the courage mindset or the conditioning, but if you find people who you aspire to be and go talk to them, make them your mentors. I got great mentors who basically helped me make very difficult decisions.

The biggest challenge is scale. If I want to be profitable and able to sell a lot of stuff, that lot of stuff, though economically great, puts you in a position where you want to mass produce. So any designer or retail person, if they want to make money, they have to mass produce, but it goes against the ethos. The challenge is finding that fine balance between mass production, where you're just shipping out garments without any thoughts, without any human element to it. When you buy from a shop, do you even think that this person made it and they may not be ethically paid for their work? Nobody cares because economically, you want to make profit. For the brand that I'm making clothes for, I know my tailors, they demand a price, and I pay them because I respect their work. And yes, I suffer - my scale has been slower. I could have made hundreds if I just wanted to, but that's not what I wanted to. I want to pay people with respect, ethically, and everything has to be good for nature. These days, retail companies are trying too much to find that scale, and in that process, they end up not paying the manufacturers or the small tailors properly. That is a huge challenge, and I have been trying to figure out ways and struggling on how to commercialize it, pay ethically, and make a profit. But I'm working it out.

Integrity and taking pride in your work are very important to me. You can make something, but do you feel that you have done a good job? Does it reflect your best work? Integrity is about taking pride in your work and being honest about things. Even if you get feedback, you should be able to introspect and ask yourself, was this feedback correct? It's about having that integrity and being honest about things to yourself, because sometimes times have been tough when I had to make difficult decisions, and delusion is not going to help anyone. Being able to keep my integrity and honesty with myself has been crucial.