How do you like your heels? At Disobedience, they like it quirky — in steel, and engraved wood, and in the shape of spheres, alphabet, curves… Anita Soundar, the founder of the Chennai-based footwear label, wants to rewrite the rules of style. Luxury for her goes beyond leather. Her focus is on vegan, cruelty-free footwear. “We choose upcyled, sustainable, earth-friendly material,” she says as we walk around her unit in Ambattur Industrial Estate.
There are shoes, in myriad colours, shapes, and sizes strewn around for quality check. The ones that have passed the test are neatly packaged and arranged on shelves. Some of these were tomatoes and bananas in their past life. “I work with natural fibres,” she says holding up a pair of boots that are made of banana leather and hand-spun kala cotton. Anita also uses linen, hemp, cellulose sheets made of wood pulp, and plastic like food wrappers, chips packet that have been upcycled. She works with NGOs like Khamir in Kutch and Vidyasagar Chennai’s weaving division where autistic children weave cotton fabric.
Anita Soundar at her unit
A chemical engineer, who also worked with environmental projects, Anita initially took up her father’s microparticle engineering business. After around eight years she felt the need to start something from scratch. “So I went to Italy to do an Eat, Pray, Love kind of thing but ended up joining a course at Arsutoria in Milan. I studied handbags. It was difficult initially as all the people who studied with me were fashion graduates. I didn’t even know how to do cuts,” she laughs. But at the end of four months, her project was selected for a fashion show.
Anita realised that handbags are not challenging enough. “It’s not a fitted design. So I started studying shoes in CFTI (Central Footwear Training Institute) Chennai and then went to NIFT, and after that did a course in Holland, Italy, the UK,” she adds. While in Holland it is all about wearability and how to make shoes with less waste, in Italy it is about style, she says. Soon, creative ideas started flooding in. Even something as simple as a leaf would inspire her. “I was told people are born with creativity, it can’t be taught. But I realised design is a process, you can actually work on it,” she says.
After five years of R&D, Disobedience officially launched on March 5, 2025. She bought the first set of machines to manufacture shoes in 2020. Then, she decided to incorporate textile into her creations. Exclusivity was what Anita wanted, rather than just buying fabric off shelves. Turning to luxury brands like Prada and Celine for inspiration, she noticed that a lot of them start from scratch and create their own textiles. “I was also thinking of purpose driven brands like Toms. So, I stared working with weavers in Assam. At the same time, I also learnt weaving at Shuttles and Needle, Chennai. Following which, she bought an old-fashioned loom on which she creates some of her own fabric, while also working with weavers. In 2021 she made a footwear with linen.
The shoes from Disobedience span the whole spectrum from edgy and chic, to delicate and casual. There are denim boots made from recycled yarn, pumps in green, black, pink, derby shoes with heels… “I have launched 50 styles,” she says. The footwear also employs the works of numerous artisans. For example, there are pretty ceramic bows on some of the flats. These are made by ceramic artists in Chennai. Karigars from Jaipur worked on the engravings on wooden heels (made of reclaimed teakwood).
Since Anita is meticulous in her approach, she did a carpentry course at Studio Clutter, Chennai, to better understand the process. “Carpenters were intimidated when I asked them to make heels. So I learnt how to create them and made prototypes and then gave it to them, they were able to replicate those,” she explains.
The shoes — made to order — take around 45 hours to make. They come packed in wooden boxes, with thoughtful little touches in the form of extra heel tips, shoe cleaner, and shoehorn. “I always felt when you buy a biscuit tin box, the box stays even after the biscuits are gone. If I give a cardboard box, it’ll be discarded. I wanted to give something people could repurpose,” adds Anita, who is now obsessed with a few pieces of solid steel springs. These may soon translate into heels, she smiles.
Prices start at ₹15,000. For details, log onto thedisobedience.com
Published – March 05, 2025 01:13 pm IST
