Modern Day Princess Shoes

At a time in fashion when pared-back, unadorned luxury is still at the fore, Liudmila founder Najeeba Hayat beats a lone drum for eccentricity on the shoe shelves of department stores across the world. With an aesthetic inspired by Disney princesses and Victorian decoration, Liudmila is as far as can be from the super-simple luxe of accessories from labels likeCéline and Mansur Gavriel that have grown so popular over recent years - but this, she asserted, is her selling point.

"The pros in my opinion outweigh the cons," Hayat told us as she visited London to catch up with stockists, which now include Browns. "At the end of the day, you are not chasing anything but your own ideas. You suffer less insecurity about your design and consequently, you stand out in the market because your product is never a compromise. A strong design identity will not allow you to be overlooked on the shelf. 

Despite the industry creed preaching that luxury consumers are sheep that gravitate towards status objects, I find that in this over-saturated market luxury customers are actually looking for something special and genuinely appreciate a new perspective. I did not get into the enormously difficult world of shoe making to dilute my vision for an imaginary customer base of the dumb, boring and trend-driven. If you're paying hundreds of pounds for a pair of shoes, I owe you a piece of my fantasy; I owe you my best effort!"

With a name inspired by Hayat's favourite (and suitably dramatic) character from Russian literature - Liudmila Rutilova, one of the central sisters in Fyodor Sologub's The Petty Demon - the brand was founded in 2013, prompting Hayat to quit her literature degree at Wesleyan University, Connecticut, to follow her dream full-time. A self-confessed "shoe encyclopedia", Hayat has been dreaming about, and doodling, and cataloguing shoes in her mind for as long as she can remember.

"If you asked me, 'What were the shoes like from Prada´s spring/summer 2007 ?' I would know, I could draw them for you," she nodded enthusiastically. And now, for the love of shoes, Hayat is happy to drive herself - and those in her Italian factory - crazy as she searches for shoe perfection.

"I created all of my heels and lasts from scratch in the same factories that produce for Manolo Blahnik, Chanel and Prada," she explained. "The lasts were made and re-made until they were at the comfort level I desired. What resulted was a near-perfect balance and an almost exact translation of my original sketches to reality. My silhouettes are so recognisable because we spend hours shaving millimetres off prototypes and remaking them for months to get the precise gentle curve and exact arch that now defines my brand. My factory owner's chief complaint is that my Leandra style takes five times longer to make than the shoe of any other client! 

To make that style in one piece required months of pattern making and one desperate night where I stayed in the factory after hours crying and refusing to leave until we found a solution to make it exactly like the sketch. We found the solution and as a result, that shoe is almost entirely hand-made. It could not have been made anywhere but in the best manufacturing district in Italy: nowhere else would they have the know-how or desire to make something so difficult for the sake of beauty. For our first season, we custom-dyed all of our nappas matte to exactly match the colour scheme from Peter Pan's mermaid lagoon. The dream only comes alive when you give it everything you've got. Luxury is about going above and beyond necessity to produce that emotion which makes you love an inanimate object."

Finding the right London showroom is high on the agenda for the coming year, as is growth in Asia, a continent she hopes will be receptive to her brightly coloured, bow and pom-pom adorned quirky shoes.

"I want to create shoes that are super fun, light, dainty and delightful but not precious," she added. "I never go above 100millimetres with heels because my shoes must be able to carry you through the day and enhance, rather than hinder, your life. The Liudmila girl is an escapist, a wanderer, a life-loving fantasist, and she needs the sensory pleasures."

And it's certain that Liudmila will give them to her. Or to her feet at last.