Meet Dubai-based fashion designer who creates power outfits for Bollywood and Hollywood A-listers

The most endearing dream of a lass of yore is to dress like Cinderella and go to the royal ball. The most enduring desire of a modern woman is to don pantsuits and break the glass ceiling. What if I said there is someone who can bridge the fantasy fare and the new-age lore with her impeccable designs crafted with fine Italian fabric, flawless French seams and some glitter for good measure?

Meet Alina Anwar, the lady who shapes chic evening gowns and cuts power outfits for Bollywood divas and Hollywood A-listers from her studio in Dubai that she set up in 2018 to launch her eponymous brand. In as little as five years, which also includes the two years of pandemic void in between, Anwar has built a portfolio that can be the envy of even the most established dressmakers in town.

Anwar’s rise from a starry-eyed designer to someone who now lands in tinseltown closets with stunning regularity is the stuff fairytales are made of. What began as a pursuit of passion for her is now a big-time obsession. From Mariah Carey to Malaika Arora — her portfolio is brimming with celebrity names and collections that travel across the world giving women of substance their ultimate sartorial realisation.

A passion that became a profession

It is not often that one comes across people like Anwar who epitomise success as if they were born to find a place in the sun from the very outset. Her meteoric rise is not to be misunderstood as something that came easy, but it certainly was aided by Lady Luck and a ‘stubbornness’ that battled out the Corona years and prevailed to become a name to reckon with in the Dubai fashion landscape.

Anwar had an acute sense of style and eye for detail as a little girl. She was also very curious about what went into the process of making a dress, and often went to the tailors and witnessed them working with fabrics, beads and other embellishments that in the end materialised as beautiful garments.

Later, when she came of age, she Googled up designs that would make her stand out in a crowd and instructed her tailor to fashion her clothes based on them. “I always wanted to wear something that no one else wore and I was often complimented for my clothes when I was in college,” she says.

She studied business at the university, but soon realised that her heart lay in the fabrics and did a fashion designing course as a preparation for the dream launch of her brand. But nothing prepared her for what was to follow.

One and a half years into her business, the scourge of Covid struck. Her brand was young, but it was still making waves with some incredible celebrity placements, and the pandemic came as a blow to her emerging enterprise.

“There was a long period of inaction. I feared it might end my dream, but I was stubborn. I knew if I gave up at that point, I would never bounce back,” she says. Her resolve to strive through the lean period without putting her sketching tools down saw her come out of it with renewed enthusiasm and some incredible orders from abroad.

When B-town came calling

If her passion and perseverance helped her weather the storm that was the pandemic, it was clearly Lady Luck that gave her the much-vaunted space in the celebrity spectrum. One must give credit to the power of social media too in this enchanting breakthrough story.

It was with a surprise enquiry from Aishwarya Rai’s stylist, who saw Anwar’s dresses on Instagram that it all began. As unbelievable as it was for her, she dispatched three pieces that the stylist had requested for, only to learn later that Rai had not got an opportunity to use them. By dint of luck, the dresses went to Kareena Kapoor Khan, who took a fancy to them. Like in all success stories, where the first instance of kismet has a domino effect, Anwar found celebrities lining up to have a dekko at her collections.