Creative Manchester

Exciting new fashion brand originates in Innospace

Shabana Azim is fascinated by fine art and quickly found her niche in fashion design. Studying a MSc in clothing design at MMU allowed Shabana to develop working and functional knowledge in the making and designing of clothes. Shabana now owns two couture fashion brands, BlaQue Ice, the male brand and Sexy lil Thang, the female brand. The two brands were set up simultaneously in January 2005 and supplied boutique style shops with small quantities of Shabanas designer fashion.

Shabana is now selling directly to large retailers and hopes to launch an online store in the near future. Shabana consciously chose local factories to produce her designs, allowing her maximum control of all areas of her business while also helping the economic development of the region.

The two brands are gaining recognition among high street retailers, as well as certain Premiership footballers from the North West region! The vision for both brands is to be selling alongside competition like G-Star Raw in all retailers in the next three years, followed by the opening of a flagship store for each brand.