• Kamil Hewavitharana on Lankan fashion and the international stage and more

The Sri Lankan fashion zeitgeist is at once small but also incredibly diverse. While our design community is small, the work produced by many of our local designers has the potential to blaze trails abroad. 

This week, The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with Kamil Hewavitharana, a designer who, since the launch of his brand LIMAK by KAMIL in 2019, has become a firm favourite in Colombo’s fashion circle. Having presented his newest collection at the most recent edition of Colombo Fashion Week (CFW), Kamil has also built an international following over the last few years. Brunch chatted with him about how he got into fashion and about his newest venture Vuqe Colombo. 

Kamil’s origin story

Kamil hails from Ginigathhena near Kandy and his love affair with fashion has been lifelong. “I come from a big family – I have five sisters and three brothers. My mother is a teacher and she used to design dresses for my sisters growing up (this was a very long time ago, there was no YouTube or internet then – she used to get the Mothercare catalogues and design for my sisters), and she always included me in the process. She would ask me what I liked, what I thought we should do with a design, etc.,” Kamil shared of his first experiences with fashion. 

As he grew, this interest in fashion stayed with him, and as a young man, he moved to Colombo and first became a model, working with Brian Kerkoven of BK Model Management. Incidentally, Kamil recalled that one of his very first modelling jobs had been with Hameedia and also served to get him even more excited about fashion. 

“I’d always admired different people and how they dressed. At that time, I began checking the internet too and looking at the way people abroad dressed. I would always be able to look at something and see how it could be made to look better. I knew then that I always wanted to do something on my own – to create something different to what other people are doing,” Kamil said.  

What happened then was a long career in fashion in many roles, working both on his own as well as for some of Sri Lanka’s fashion brands of the day, including Dolce Vita, Arena, and Romafour. At Romafour, as a buyer and merchandiser, Kamil also had the chance to travel more and immerse himself in different fashion cultures, all of which influenced his own work. 

“Working in fashion is a great chance to meet different people. The thing is, fashion is very nice to see, but you can also always learn something from fashion – how to align with different people, how to communicate ideas – and I had really good opportunities to travel and see the world and the different stuff people do in different countries, how they do it, and why,” Kamil explained, adding that over the years, he had also started doing fashion shows. 

“My first show was Rozanne Diasz’s The Runway 2014, and then I have also done two or three shows in Alicante and Calpe in Spain for International Best Male and Female Model World. Colombo Fashion Week 2019 where I presented LIMAK by KAMIL for the first time changed my life and I wanted to create more and more amazing things. 

“I have since showcased in London, New York, and Rome and it was an amazing experience. I’ve also shown in the Middle East at Dubai Fashion Week and twice at the Dubai Expo and also in India at the GICW in Delhi and at CFW*LUXE Fashion Show in Pune.”

Creating LIMAK by KAMIL

The name LIMAK by KAMIL for Kamil’s brand came at the recommendation of friends who noted that Kamil spelt backwards formed an interesting name from which to build a brand. Kamil’s design ethos involves creating voluminous and constructed outfits which have a great sense of drama.

His most recent collection at CFW reflected Kamil’s signature style of blending modern and traditional elements, showcasing his unique vision for sustainable and ethical fashion. Kamil’s use of eco-friendly fabrics and his commitment to responsible manufacturing underscores his dedication to sustainability and ethical fashion practices, encapsulating his belief that fashion can be a force for good and that clothing can be beautiful but also responsible and ethical. 

“From my young days, I’ve always loved seeing people dressing well and part of why I find fashion so interesting is because there is always something you can improve,” Kamil said of what drives him as a designer. “If you change something about a design it can look nicer, and even now when I see something that someone is wearing, I always think about how it can be made to look nicer or more glamorous. This was what inspired me to start my own collection in the first place – to see people dressed well.” 

One huge focus of Kamil’s when it comes to his designs is fabric, with LIMAK by KAMIL placing a huge emphasis on manipulating fabrics – be it printing, pleating, or manipulating them into different shapes, be they structural or organic. This also makes LIMAK by KAMIL more conscious as a brand, as these different manipulations often result in very little waste. 

The inspiration for his collections most often comes from his travels, with his very first collection for CFW in 2019 taking inspiration from European churches and cathedrals. What Kamil struggles most with is balancing Sri Lanka’s conservative style with international trends to find a middle ground. Particularly with menswear, Kamil noted that this could be a challenge – womenswear was a lot more flexible, but menswear still remained very conservative in terms of the fabrics and shapes men were willing to experiment with.

Beyond LIMAK by KAMIL

Kamil’s newest venture is into fashion retail. Having worked with fashion retail brands throughout his career, he explained to Brunch that fashion retail spaces, especially those that served as a platform for other brands to grow, played a vital part in the local fashion industry. 

And so, in August this year, he hopes to launch Vuqe Colombo, a fashion retail space that can help Sri Lankan designer brands of all sizes connect better with customers. “Vuqe Colombo will come to life in a lovely property on 5th Lane in Colombo 7 and is for all designers, young and old, who make creative and trendy fashion to have a space to shine,” Kamil shared, adding that for him, it was now or never to take this plunge to open such a platform amidst troubled economic times. “If you’re not going to start now, then you will never start, and if you’re not going to take the risk, then you will never know what could have been.” 

“A platform like Vuqe Colombo can help other designers reach clients. I know how much our designers struggle. If you have a shop dedicated entirely to one brand, some people will like it and some people won’t, but you will also have people who will not come in simply because it doesn’t look like something they would like. By creating a space for other designers to also show and sell their clothes, Vuqe Colombo gives all these designers the opportunity to grow their customer base.”

Kamil also encouraged designers, even those just starting out, to reach out to him to see if Vuqe Colombo was a platform they could be part of, stressing that he understood the challenges designers who were breaking into the market faced, and through Vuqe Colombo, he hoped to lend a helping hand.

Driving Sri Lankan fashion forward

This led us to discuss the Sri Lankan fashion industry and what Kamil thinks the industry most needs to reach its fullest potential. One key system of support missing that Kamil highlighted was support from the Government. “We have so many talented designers in Sri Lanka and they have the power to represent Sri Lanka internationally. When you’re invited to Rome or India or anywhere in the world, they introduce you as a Sri Lankan designer. They introduce Sri Lanka. You are representing your country abroad and people appreciate your country and what it has to offer,” he said. 

However, the support designers receive from the country often leaves a lot to be desired. From increasingly restrictive import fees on fabrics to the shortage of basic supplies and accessories to even things like imposing baggage penalties on designers trying to take collections abroad for showcasing, Kamil shared that he felt that the Government could do more to help foster designers and if unable to create more opportunities for local designers to represent Sri Lanka internationally, to instead make it easier for designers to make use of the opportunities that did exist. 

Kamil also spoke about the need to foster designers within the industry itself and give new designers the opportunity to grow. “For example, CFW has done a lot with our fashion industry and tried to take us to a different level,” he said, speaking of opportunities such as the CFW*LUXE Fashion Show held in Pune last February, which saw Sri Lankan designers invited to showcase internationally through the CFW platform. The development of more private platforms that can build opportunities for Sri Lankan designers to grow can serve to benefit not only the designers themselves but the industry as a whole. 

However, Kamil noted, designers too needed to walk the walk and rise above the mentality of only looking out for themselves and their own glory. They need to help each other. As an example, he shared that Indian designer Suneet Varma had volunteered to help him backstage while he had been showing his collection in Pune, India, a gesture that had struck Kamil particularly hard because, in his experience, designers in Sri Lanka did not support each other in such a way. 

Another gap in Sri Lankan fashion is the favouring of certain prominent designers over others, sometimes to the detriment of designers who are not as well known. “Certain people get prominence all the time. We need to treat people equally. When I was showcasing at Rome Fashion Week, everyone was treated equally. There were, of course, senior designers with amazing collections, but everyone was treated equally. No designers were treated like they were nothing because it was recognised that every designer there had worked really hard to showcase.” 

At the end of the day, recognising hard work can never go wrong. Sharing some parting advice for designers looking to get into fashion, Kamil said: “Never give up on your dreams and always try to create something new. And never forget your past and where you come from. Be humble.” 

Info box

For more information on LIMAK by KAMIL or to get involved with Vuqe Colombo, reach out on Instagram @limakbykamil