Desi women agree that contemporary designer juttis are not too big on comfort. Sabista Khan’s label The Cinderella Story picked up on this problem from the get-go. 

Basically, the Cinderella story has a very topsy turvy tale, we started off as a company that would resell shoes because I was somebody who was a very keen shopper and reviewer and people love the way I reviewed things. People love my attention to detail because of which, a lot of my friends and family, members told me why don’t you kick start something of your own? I’ve always wanted to be a designer, but I haven’t studied from design school, so I didn’t understand the fundamentals and concepts of design and fashion. 

I just had basic styling knowledge, initially, we started off as a reseller brand where we would curate collections from all over the country and bring it under one roof in Hyderabad and sell it at exhibitions. That’s how it began, but somewhere in late 2018, I started feeling uncomfortable about the fact that Brand doesn’t resonate with who I am and what I want to do with it. 

I was getting a lot of push from my family and friends, they said “start designing something of your own” and I observed that everybody was very focused on getting juttis done because Juttis have been the flavour of that season. 

I was traveling and, finding kaarigars, finding vendors who would assemble the jutti. And throughout this entire journey, I was walking through tiny lanes, living in a tin shop. I learned how to assemble jutti and everything related to it. I learned the art from the artisans, I decided to outsource work to them and start my design journey with them. 

Finally, somewhere in 2019, we have the rebranding, materialization of the designer version of Cinderella Story, that’s when things took off. celebrities and stylists and the public noticed our work in Hyderabad. 

Originally the brand was started in Pune as a reseller brand and then eventually by the time it moves to Hyderabad we had turned into designers. It took a lot of trial and error, but ultimately it yielded our identity as designers.