Interview with Shareen Sarwar
This profile on fashion designer Shareen Sarwar was written for JoonBug.com, a lifestyle publication covering events, news, fashion and music in major cities across the U.S. including LA, NYC and Miami.
Shareen Sarwar
Miami’s design district welcomes fashion blogger and vintage pioneer, Shareen Sarwar. Sparking a whole new world of inspiration, the White Rabbit himself may possibly have led Shareen to Miami to begin her adventure. With her keen eye for potential, Shareen ventured off into a world full of quirky people and style to bring us her uniquely designed and specially handpicked online collection, Vintage Mavens. Miami’s chic-yet-laid-back style is commonly underrated by the fashion industry, but notables like Shareen prove that the city’s fashion scene is more than its annual swimwear extravaganza.
Shareen learned to trust her artistic vision after graduating from George Washington University with degrees in International Relations and Politics. Though her degrees were in other fields, she applies what she learned throughout her college career to VM everyday.
“Going to school in Washington, D.C. taught me to build the social and networking skills I needed to start a career in fashion,” explains Shareen.
While her parents encouraged her to get educated in an area with substance after high school, Shareen knew it was time to pursue her visions upon college graduation. With determination and the crucial support of her mother, Shareen’s dreams were on their way to becoming a reality. Apart from the incredible vintage finds that are handpicked by Shareen herself, she also has an upcoming vintage-inspired collection debuting in April called “We are Vintage Mavens,” whose pieces will be designed all on her own. Her excitement to be the designer behind the collection instead of her usual role as an intermediary is a given, but she’s also happy about the support that she’s receiving from her mother with the new project. The queen of all embroidery and seaming (sewing since high school), Shareen tells us that her mother “is the driving force behind the original designs for the clothing line. She’s the sole seamstress for each piece and hand-makes them down to the buttons. It’s an intense collaborative process, and I’m just excited that I have the opportunity to work with her in this way.”
Passionate about the preservation of animals and the environment, another project that keeps Shareen busy is her dolphin T-shirt initiative, which you can read all about on her blog. The shirts will be sold through her website with all proceeds benefiting the project. It’s this environmental consciousness that inspired Vintage Mavens. “I built Vintage Mavens around the idea of recycling gorgeous, vintage clothing rather than buying new,” Shareen tells us. “Our environmentally sound ideology has been implemented into many aspects of our business, including recycled packaging and re-usable materials. It will always be the driving force behind giveaways and product decisions.”
We had an itch that Shareen was a nature lover before we even met her thanks to her video look books, where you can find her walking through overgrown fields in Keep it Clean wearing antlers by the ocean in Tusk, and passing time in her very own Secret Garden. They all have an overall admiration of the outdoors, but these “shorts”, as Shareen calls them, have also helped her bring her bring her collection to life. After all, every vintage piece has its own story to be told. The video look books were actually Shareen’s husband’s bright idea. “The video look books were brought about by my husband, who is a filmmaker. He thought it would bring a new facet of Vintage Mavens to the table, and he was right. Through the video look books, you have the ability to tell a story with music, location, and of course, clothing. It is simply a more encompassing art form than photography. I hope that it offers something new to our readers and clients.”
The collaboration has helped her take Vintage Mavens to new heights right here in Miami. “I’ve been here for almost five years and the Miami fashion industry has already grown an incredible amount. It’s more than just the city that hosts Swim Week –it now has an array of small vintage shops, high end boutiques, and amazing designers that will change the face of the industry,” she tells us. “I just hope that VM is offering something to the Miami fashion industry that didn’t exist before…”
Be sure to keep yourself updated with Shareen’s fashion blog, and keep a look out for her originally designed collection “We are Vintage Mavens,” debuting this April.