Eastern girl with Western wings

Anila Hussain, who comes with a keen business mindset and a strong streak of values and compassion, her story is two phased.

About Anila
Anila comes from Karachi, Pakistan and has now lived in Geneva, Switzerland for over 17 years with her family and three children. She is a national level gymnast, an AMI Montessori Educator and social impact entrepreneur. Having strong roots in the east, she is aware of the challenges that a girl comes across in more traditional societies and is committed to using her western education and free thought to support and empower women all over.

Her business
Being the CVO ( Chief Vision Officer ) Her fashion brand SHENANNZ was founded in partnership with her sister and is in the process of showcasing east-west fusion couture collection internationally with a deeper message of women’s emancipation and empowerment. Anila currently oversees the showcase of SHENANNZ’s couture collection in Europe across fashion events and platforms such as Montreux Moda Switzerland, London Fashion week, Swiss Fashion week as well as Pakistan Fashion week. Anila is committed to creating sustainable livelihoods for under privileged women through her platform; her dream is to spread the message of gender equality through entrepreneurship and education, across the world.

Her Story
“I believe that everyone has a story. The journey of SHENANNZ is a combination of eastern roots and western wings.”

Anila was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan – also known as the heart of Pakistan; it still makes Anila’s heart beat since most of her family resides in Karachi. Anila has 3 siblings – one older sister and 2 younger brothers, she’s always loved them dearly, but her childhood had societal pressures to deal with. She was the dark-skinned girl among her siblings – while this might seem like unnecessary information; this was a real “issue” when Anila was growing up. To make matters worse, parents were worried about finding her a suitable match!
Anila took this entire challenge very positively and always looked forward – she wanted to be a trend setter, she wasn’t sure how she was going to do it but she remained determined! Amidst all this, she got married to a wonderful man Nauman and moved to Switzerland, a diverse western country was going to change everything; and how!

Anila’s sister Shenila ALi, mother of two teenagers Co-Founder and Creative Design Head at SHENANNZ had her own parallel journey; she had graduated as a gold medalists for bachelors of Fashion Designing being a mom, wife and a daughter in law. While Shenila pursued a career in fashion back home in Pakistan against all odds; Anila earned a Montessori diploma in Geneva being a mother of three.

Then they coined the name “SHENANNZ” SHEN ( Shenila) and ANNZ (Anila) in their mom’s sitting lounge sitting on the floor in 2004. However, it was not until 2014 that the brand was officially born! The path was harsh but their persistence got them to where they are! An idea of creating ethical “east meets west” designer wear got the highest number of votes at a conference EBBF and that was the PUSH they needed!
Their vision to empower women by providing them a steady-state was and still remains to be the back bone of their business.

SHENANNZ is an ethical brand dedicated to creating fashion with fusion of eastern and western sensibilities, its vision is to celebrate physical and spiritual beauty and bring all that we love about east to customers around the world, in an endeavor to make a difference to the lives of women, to help create equal opportunity for everyone in our meaningful way.

London Fashion week –HOUSE OF iKons
September 2017

FEB 2018

How it all started:

Speech on Women at AWE Summit on our journey and women Empowerment- Zurich

Present time at SHENNANZ:

We are on our journey to build our capacity to merge passion for fashion and love for education by taking meaningful actions and engaging with like minded people using EBBF tools.
EBBF: Ethical business building the future( www.ebbf.org)

We have launched our brand in UK, Switzerland and having it own social arm as a Foundation in Pakistan run by Shenila and as a World One country Association in Switzerland by Anila with a purpose-driven mindset.

Junior youth and Youth leadership program taking place in Switzerland locally and in Pakistan in local communities for moral upliftment and raising awareness of social and economical issues and taking meaningful actions together.

 

Future Projects:

For the association :

To have more Montessori classrooms widely spread in slum villages to bring gender equality in education to meet the SDG goals of providing Quality Education.

Some Montessori Educational training programs are taking place in a Montessori classroom we’re partnering within Mazin Academy Community buildings school in Karachi to uplift organically the local communities of girls and boys to lead and serve.

Travelling to Ghana, Togo and Afghanistan by October 2020 for leading Montessori education project within local communities.

For the Brand:
Making our way to open more sewing institute for women ( our fore) to break the chains and have financial independence.

Open our Outlet in Middle East , Doha

Landing into London, Milan fashion week September 2020 and Feb. 2021.

Bring the Chairperson WEF, and OWIT Hosting Women Economic forum in Lausanne in partnership with OWIT ( organization of women in international trade) in March 2021 with a network of ALL Ladies LEAGUE having more than 30000 women globally.

 

• Anila Hussain
• association
• beauty
• clothes
• ethical brand
• fashion
• SHENNANZ