Local sisters make South Asian fashion more accessible with Rent the Runway partnership
Niki and Ritika Shamdasani always found it hard to find South Asian clothing they liked, so they decided to start designing their own.
Before starting their clothing brand, Sani, finding cultural clothing that the sisters were excited to wear was a process.
“It was much more traditional. Tradition is beautiful...but it wasn't something you could take from a South Asian wedding to a gala,” said Niki, the older of the two sisters and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ultimately, a majority of the clothes they had to choose from felt too traditional, uncomfortable, or just weren't what they wanted to wear.
“We just could not find clothing that we felt comfortable in," said Ritika, a freshman at North Carolina State University. "We kind of noticed this was a problem for a lot of people. We asked a lot of our friends, and friends of friends, and they were like, 'Yeah, the shopping experience here is kind of broken.' And we were like, 'Maybe we should do something about it.'”
When their mother was growing up in India, it was easy for women to find fabric and meet with tailors to design their own clothes. The sisters figured they could design clothes, too.
“We started Sani out of a personal need," Ritika said. "We were going to a wedding, and we were trying to find outfits that made us feel confident, that we liked, because they represented both of our identities — both our South Asian one but also our Western one."
When starting what they originally called their “passion project,” neither sister had any design background. What began as individual designs eventually grew to encompass multiple aspects of South Asian fashion, including sarees, lehengas, dhotis, jewelry and more.
Sani became a modern-day clothing brand for the South Asian woman.
“For us, the value is really at the intersection of this design that is more multifunctional, more innovative," Niki said. "We build in more design things such as pockets to make it for the modern woman, and it's for the shopping experience which is how you make it more accessible."
A little over a year ago, Niki sent a cold email to the CEO of Rent the Runway, Jennifer Hyman. Niki heard on a podcast that Hyman started her company after sending a cold email to another fashion designer for advice, so she decided to do the same.
“We had been talking about for a while how Rent the Runway would be a really perfect partner," Niki said. "After I heard that podcast, I was like, 'All right, let's cold email her and see what happens.'”
A partnership was born.
Sani currently has three pieces available on the Rent the Runway website, and the Shamdasani sisters are excited to have the ability to have modern South Asian clothing accessible to the modern woman.
“For me, the biggest reward has been when young women and their moms say, 'Hey, now we don't have to go to India to shop for our clothing,'” Niki said.
“That has been at the core of our mission — helping make South Asian fashion more mainstream, helping expose it to a more global audience and so having young women able to now see the clothing on this major fashion platform that has all sorts of designers on there," Niki continued. "It’s really such an honor, and we are really grateful that we have that opportunity, and we are just going to keep doing more of that.”
Everything the sisters have done so far seems to come to fruition with the Rent the Runway partnership. Now the masses can rent their clothing from anywhere in the United States for less than $100.
Anyone who wants a beautiful piece of South Asian clothing won’t have to travel far or wide for something they simply tolerate. They can just rent something that they love.
In one simple phrase, Ritika describes how she wants any woman who wears Sani clothing to feel “like a badass.”
“I want them to feel confident,” she continued. “I want them to feel like they should be proud of the identity that they have. They should be proud of showcasing the culture of where they are from. They should feel comfortable.”
