Veena Chauhan AT HOME WITH

Fashion Designer, Artist & Real Estate Professional

BY AMY UNGER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANDREW TOMASINO

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Labels really aren’t in vogue anymore, except perhaps for the labels that are literally in Vogue, the magazine, or its like-minded, fashionforward cousins. Chanel, Prada, McQueen, Dior: these are some of the brands that have earned a coveted spot in the pantheon of couture icons. Veena Chauhan has much appreciation for their craft. “These people were true masters in what they did,” she gushes. “Look at the seams, look at the stitching, look at the cut. They’re masterpieces. They’re not just clothes. They’re art.” Perhaps one day Chauhan will be on that list of greats, too. The Lehigh Valley may know her best as a realtor who specializes in high-end properties, but fashion is also a passion. Although her designs have turned a few prominent heads over the years, including that of Anna Wintour’s former right-hand man, the timing was never quite right for Chauhan to get her own line off the ground. But now, with a deeper understanding of how the business works, coupled with the tenacity that comes easy for her (“When I take anything seriously, I go full force,” she says), Chauhan’s talent will find the wider audience she craves.

Chauhan (nee Gowda) was born and raised in Bangalore, India. She says as a child she was fascinated by her mother’s collection of English embroideries and penchant for fine fabrics. “My mother and her sisters, they all made their own clothes. They grew up in a very elegant family.” She can recall the intricate detail of the knitting and crochet work on her mother’s dresses. Chauhan says her father was also always sharply dressed: “He never left the house without an old-school blazer and a shirt. That was always in my head—to be proper and be impeccable.” The architecture around her made an impression as well— she remembers the cathedral ceilings and the intricacies of the ancient stone relief work of the Belur and Halebid temples. All of these early observations stayed with her and would later shape her designs.

Post high school, Chauhan studied architecture in India for a year before moving to California, where she enrolled at Pepperdine University and focused on international business. After graduating, she worked in sales and marketing for a few technology companies but she knew something was missing. “My heart was never really into it,” she says. By 1999 Chauhan had relocated to New York City. Among her business aspirations on the East Coast: she toyed with the idea of opening her own restaurant in Manhattan. She spent time at the high-end Indian restaurant Tamarind to learn the ropes. Those plans later fizzled, but the experience would prove to be life-altering, anyway, just not in the way Chauhan had imagined.

A patron had noticed Chauhan at the restaurant in 2003. That man—Sidhartha was his first name—inquired about her the next time he came back, but Chauhan’s gig there was over. Undeterred, he persisted and pestered and eventually managed to get her telephone number from the restaurant’s manager. They later met for drinks at The Plaza Hotel, and romance bloomed. They were engaged in December of 2004 and married the following year.

The couple moved to New Jersey after Veena found out she was pregnant. Their son Aryaan was born in 2006. Chauhan says it was her husband who encouraged her to try her hand at fashion design. Although she had no formal training, she was often complimented on the ensembles she put together for herself. She knew she had an eye for beauty. She was also compelled to act by the fashion fatigue she felt on shopping excursions. “Every time I would try to buy clothes, I was tired of the same cookie cutter styles here,” Chauhan says. “There was nothing that really excited me in the design sense.” In 2010 she started working on sketches and designs, laying the foundation for a namesake company and fashion line. Her very first sample, she says, was a cocktail dress. She gravitated toward high-end couture because that’s what she knew.

But then 2012 delivered a gut punch to the Chauhan family when Aryaan was diagnosed with leukemia. When asked to recall her reaction to that devastating news, she pauses. “I died,” she says finally. But it wasn’t long before her pragmatism kicked into overdrive. “I said, ‘OK, what do I need to do now?’ I became a tiger mom. A warrior. I didn’t cry for almost five years. I couldn’t. If I did, everything else would collapse. I was the foundation.”

Chauhan persevered with her fashion line as best as she could, calling it a blessing in disguise that kept her task-oriented and distracted while her son was undergoing treatment. She befriended Jacqui Wenzel, founder of JWM, a consulting and merchandising firm that helps emerging designers become global brands.

Wenzel helped Chauhan make inroads in the industry. Chauhan recalls rubbing elbows with notables like the late André Leon Tally, the onetime creative director and editor-at-large at Vogue magazine. She says he complimented her on a jacket she was wearing, a Chauhan original. “He said, ‘Do not ever give up fashion design. You’re very talented,’” Chauhan recalls.

By 2017, she was learning a lot about the business and selling her pieces at trunk shows, but the pressures of running her own company were mounting. “Everything was adding up and it was taking way too much from me,” says Chauhan. She decided to put her design company on the back burner while she focused on a different career path: in

2016 she had obtained her real estate license. And 2019 brought a change of scenery for the entire family. Her husband, head of commercial excellence and operations for Sanofi’s U.S. diabetes division, was tired of battling New Jersey traffic, and both Veena and Sidhartha wanted a quieter, smaller community to raise their son, preferably near a park. Allentown’s West End, which Chauhan calls her

“hamlet,” provided them with all of those things.

Aryaan, now 16 years old and cancer-free, is a student at Allentown’s Central Catholic High School. “He’s my hero,” Chauhan says. “He’s my inspiration.” Chauhan is a real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway, specializing in high-end commercial and residential properties. Most recently, she also became a painter, thanks to the encouragement and tutelage of her friend, Allentown dentist Thomas George, who sadly passed away after a battle with prostate cancer last November. “I have never painted ever in my life and today I paint acrylic abstract paintings,” Chauhan says. “Moral of the story is, everyone can do anything and don’t let anyone stop you from your dreams.”

And so, Chauhan once again is pursuing that other dream—the dream of establishing herself as a fashion designer. She’s working on a women’s collection that she says will be sophisticated, elegant and classy—think 1950s and ’60s vibes with a touch of European glamour. “Every woman should feel great when they wear a piece,” Chauhan says. She’s also assembling a new team and retooling her website— look for a revamped veenachauhan.com in the fall. This is where her pieces will be available for purchase. Chauhan is excited to return to a journey that began more than a decade ago. “I am going to go back and finish what I didn’t finish then,” she says. veenachauhan.com