Chetna Singh MD is a physician who clearly has a gift for art. She has taken her talent and love of painting into the world of fashion. As a physician, a wife and a mother, she runs a growing fashion business that is profitable and that she also hopes to use to help others someday. This sounds like a lot for one person to handle, but Dr. Singh has taken the time to research every step along the way.
When Chetna Singh was growing up in India, she had an aptitude for art, as well as the acumen required for hard core sciences, which qualified her for medical school. She explains that she was debating between art and medicine, but she jokes that good sense prevailed and she went to medical school. When she came to the US in the mid 1990’s and started working as a medical resident, she did not have time for art during those years of hard work.
Both Dr Singh and her husband are Emergency Medicine physicians and parents to 3 children. As her children grew older and more independent, Dr. Singh found that she had more time to revive her interest in art. She began paining for enjoyment and almost 4 years ago she thought about the idea of wearing her art. She used the Internet to learn about fabrics and printing. She experimented with materials and designs until she created something that she liked.
While she initially thought that she would personally do the job of printing her paintings onto fabric to create scarves, she ultimately decided to go with a low cost fabric printer in her native India. She also built a website by herself to showcase her scarves. In the beginning things weren’t perfect. She says that the printers weren’t high quality, there were some issues with orders and, overall, there was a huge learning curve. She even looks back at her first collection and isn’t thrilled with it. But, she kept working and improving her business. She hired a better printing shop- at a higher cost that she says is well worth the quality. She hired someone to take care of the website, but she doesn’t regret having initially built a website by herself because now she knows how to manage the back end whenever she needs to. Now in her fourth season, she has even decided to add new material to her upcoming line. She has only worked with silk so far, and this season she is adding cotton modal mix. She has noticed that some customers prefer cotton, while others prefer silk. Dr. Singh still always uses oil paint, acrylics or mixed media on canvas to create the designs for her scarves.
She has marketed her designs through pop up shows, which are organized to include several designers at events. And she was even selected to participate in a Henri Bedel trunk show a few years ago for 3 days.
Dr. Singh still works part time as an Emergency Medicine physician. She is happy that she chose art over medicine years ago because it allows to her enjoy the creative process without financial pressure. In the future, she would like to be able to donate some of her work to non-profit as away to raise money for worthy causes that can help people around the world. A few of her designs are seen below. To see more of Chetna Singh's designs, you can visit her website chetnasingh.com
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