Love a freaky shoe? You’ll love CeeCee

Over the course of their careers, many stylists build massive shoe collections worth envying. But how many decide to start designing the ones they can’t find? Chehal Chawla (or CeeCee, if you will) is one of them.

After graduating from Istituto Marangoni in Mumbai, Chawla worked as a fashion stylist, always on the hunt for homegrown shoe brands for her clients. But the more she looked, the more she realised it was almost impossible to find bold, off-kilter shoes designed for a fashion audience. Everyone seemed to be doing the same “massy” designs, none with the sense of irreverence she was looking for. So, she took it upon herself and enrolled in a short course on footwear design at Central Saint Martins in London. After another two years of research and development, CeeCee finally hit the pavement in 2025.

But designing shoes wasn’t just about filling a gap in the market. For the 25-year-old stylist turned footwear designer, it also meant liberation from the tight confines of a client brief and letting her creativity run wild. Since launching, the brand has embraced just about every colour imaginable, explored through a tight edit of eight to 10 styles per collection. While the collections might be small, animal prints, saturated colours, denim, suede, and unexpected silhouettes make appearances. Even Chawla seems surprised by what catches on. Who knew deer-spot mules could be such a hit?

Finding the right manufacturers was the most challenging part of setting up shop. Most factories weren’t willing to take on small batches of hand-crafted, genuine-leather shoes in unusual designs—like a thong slipper that turns into a boot at the ankle, a laced loafer style, or a ballerina-trainer hybrid. Some even tried to convince Chawla to design more basic shoes, simply because they would be easier to manufacture. Refusing to compromise on her designs, she eventually managed to find shoemakers in Delhi that not only agreed but encouraged her to make even stranger designs.

“India has the capacity to really make beautiful handmade stuff, [but] it is very hard to find people who actually want to invest the extra effort just to make something beautiful,” she says. “The best part about working with them is that it has not changed my designing at all. They’re very supportive about bringing my vision to life. So, whatever I’m sketching, they’ll be like, ‘Okay, let’s figure it out.’”

Chawla remains involved from the beginning to the end of the design process. From sketching every design herself, to sourcing materials and directing shoots, she doesn’t leave a shoe’s side until it is in her customer’s hands. The ideas, she says, tend to come to her instinctively, but the people wearing her shoes shape what happens next too. The brand, she says, “directly resonates with the kind of woman who believes in movement. It could be a young girl going to college, attending a concert, or it could be someone who’s probably in her sixties and going out for a solo trip. It is for women who are loud. They’re going out and they’re speaking their minds,” she says.

From animal-print ballet flats and slingbacks with contrast stitching to knee-high boots and mules, CeeCee’s designs are the kind that become the starting point of an outfit rather than the finishing touch. Chawla’s favourite design happens to be the Rodeo denim boot, partly because the design combines denim, suede, and leather but mostly because she gets a large canvas to work with.

There will soon be more. After completing a short course at Accademia Riaci in Florence this summer, Chawla is in the initial stages of designing a new collection. Inspired by the black swan/white swan duality, the upcoming collection will feature designs that explore the contrast and tension between grunge and romanticism. A line of small leather goods—which will include lighter and lip gloss cases made from the collection’s scraps—is in the works too.

Available on shopceecee.com