Aviraté to venture into overseas markets

By Cassie Mascarenhas

Bringing the glitz and glamour of cutting edge fashion of the world class designers in Europe and the United States to our island nation, exclusive clothing label Aviraté, Sri Lanka’s high street fashion label, opened its flagship store at Maitland Crescent recently and has already garnered for itself a faithful following of highly satisfied customers.

An initiative of Timex Apparels, Aviraté is the first retail venture under their own name and was initially launched in June 2010 during the IIFA fashion extravaganza. A sample line of the designs were introduced in popular department store Odel as a test run, where it was met with great success.

This prompted the opening of the store, which is conveniently located in central Colombo, in time for the festive season and has received a great response so far, passing all expectations of the management of Timex during the short time it has been open to the public.

Mimicking the layout of the plush high-end retail boutiques in the West, the store with its minimalistic modern layout although understated, is eye-catching and attractive and artfully displays their vast range of both every day and evening wear.

Derived from the Sanskrit word ‘avirati’ which means sensuality, Aviraté has certainly lived up to this with its clothing line, delivering sophisticated and sensual clothing for women of all ages. Catering to all needs, the store is indeed a ‘one-stop shop’ for any customer offering clothes for all occasion as well as lingerie, shoes and accessories to complement their clothes, all of which are designed by Aviraté’s own designers.

While some of the pieces, as expected, are fairly expensive, the clothes overall have been priced very reasonably and easily affordable to anyone. The lower prices of some of the pieces however do not mean that the quality of the product has been compromised; the store is easily able to boast that each piece in all price ranges is all a part of its international range of fashion wear.

“As any internationally acclaimed designer brand, we will follow the fashion calendar and produce designs for each of the upcoming seasons and we hope to keep introducing new pieces every week so that our valued customers will always have fresh pickings whenever they walk into the store,” explained the Managing Director of Timex and Aviraté Arshad Sattar.

Timex also hopes to do away with the idea that one has to travel abroad in order to purchase the latest designs and expects to fill in that gap with its designs. Looking to make available the latest trends in the fashion capitals of the world in Sri Lanka, Timex’s design team in the UK works closely with a team of designers here in Sri Lanka in order to ensure this. Sattar assured that the designs at Aviraté would be those that could be found at any high-end retail outlet in Europe or the US.

Looking to offer impeccable service to their customers, Aviraté has a highly trained entourage of customer service representatives who are able to offer expert style advice and assistance. The store also has an in-house tailor and offers valet parking. A café adjoining the store will also be opened shortly. A state-of-the-art website, one that no other store in Sri Lanka currently offers, will also be up and running soon.

Aviraté is the brainchild of Timex Apparels, one of the top five apparel manufactures in the country, which has so far partnered with some of the biggest names in fashion such as Esprit, Wallis, Jones New York, Marks and Spencer and Diesel to name a few.

Timex’s vision is to make Aviraté an internationally renowned brand, synonymous with Sri Lankan culture which is symbolised in its logo, a simple ‘a’ imposed over a letter from the Sinhalese alphabet, effectively combining the two cultures, which will promote Sri Lanka on a global platform.

The opening of the first outlet in Colombo is just the beginning for the successful clothing label. Timex already has plans to open stores in Kandy and at the airport duty free as well as entering the Indian market sometime next year, after which it will set its sights on Europe.