IZREE KAI HAFFIZ

Tell us about yourself, Kai.

I was born to a middle-income family in KL, and I was a straight A student—so because of my good grades, my family had hopes for me to be a professional. But I had always loved the arts and wanted to pursue a career that involved creativity. So, I chose architecture because it is somewhat a combination of both the art and scientific realms.

Why did you switch your focus from architecture to fashion?

As a student, I worked part-time in various projects, from architecture to interior design, furniture design and more, but I never had a chance to explore fashion. So when a mutual friend introduced me to Fizi, we hit it off and talked a lot about his work. I had tried to partner with a designer before, but it did not work out, then I tried again with Fizi, and he was keen as well.

Is Fiziwoo a combination of your names, Haffiz and Radzi Woo?

No, no. See, before we met, Fizi was already joining fashion design competitions under that name! It didn’t make sense for us to change the name after I came onboard.

What has your journey with Fiziwoo taught you?

Wow, it has taught me a lot! It sounds cliché, but it’s true. Fizi and I, we have gone through a lot of suffering to be where we are at today. We had to work hard in the early days to survive. Our first customers were our friends and we barely scraped by at first. We won many fashion competitions and we used the prize money to buy equipment like sewing machines, an outlock machine, fabric, but for our own survival, we had to think of creative ways to get us through those difficult times.

What do you mean by ‘creative ways’?

We did plenty of side hustles to support ourselves, we would sell second-hand perfumes and go around looking to do odd jobs to get us through the month. There was this one period in our early days when we did not have enough money for food. We pooled our spare change and whatever we gathered was spent on eggs and white rice. We ate that same meal once a day, every day for three weeks.

It must have been a hard time.

It was tough because I had always grown up with food on the table; I would cry sometimes, but the experience taught me humility. No matter how famous Fiziwoo is, I will always remember that period of suffering and remind myself to treat everyone I meet with kindness. You will never know what people go through— whether you are rich or poor.

After all that struggle, when do you think Fiziwoo got its big break?

We had such difficult times that when opportunities came our way, we put our heart and soul into it. We gave our all to our customers. We believed that if they loved our work, they would come back. Soon, word spread and we earned enough to scale up our business. But to answer your question, our first big break was when the supermodel Tinie invited us to KLFW. We started modestly but the opportunities that came our way after the show helped us grow rapidly. We collaborated on a ready-to-wear collection with Zalora, designed the Miss Universe Malaysia costume and showcased our work internationally. These opportunities were great, but Fizi and I worked too hard to leave things to chance!

What skills did you have to acquire to be where you are today?

As our business grew, Fizi had to teach me how to sew, just so he can sleep at night once in a while. And boy, was he a tough teacher! He would shout at me. So garang.

NO MATTER HOW FAMOUS WE BECOME, I’LL NEVER FORGET OUR SUFFERING. THIS IS WHY I TREA T EVERYONE WITH KINDNESS