A Canvas of Faith

Meet Rahul Dev, a Hyderabad-based artist, and the creative mind behind ‘Unhinged Customs’, a custom-made wearable art brand that is known for its impeccable handpainted sneakers and accessories. According to Rahul, after 25 years of trying his hand at multiple fields including science, finance, and sports, he decided to build a career around something he had been doing on the side all his life-Arts. He shares his slice of success story with TMM.

AN INSIGHT
I’m a former MPC student, that then studied CA up to INTER, then quit CA and worked at Amazon for a couple of years. It happened 9 years ago, when an urge to have a Chelsea FC Jersey made me go beyond the obvious and I painted a pair of canvas shoes of Star Converse (super expensive- RS 1299/1399 at the time) and to give it that perfect finish, I embroidered the Chelsea crest on a stiff piece of cloth and stitched it onto the shoe. This was the time I realized that painting is my happy place and for the next couple of years I kept painting shoes for family and friends as a hobby, until 2017, when the life-changing twist came into my life. In December 2017, I had participated in a worldwide talent hunt and was selected for the semifinal stage that was happening in Dubai, where I painted The Koi, justifying the theme ‘LIFE’. To me, it’s the simplest representation of balance, and life and is closely associated with the Yin and Yang theory of Feng Shui. At the end of the competition, when the name of the finalists was announced, I was standing with a half-painted pair of shoes losing all hope, and then I heard my name as the finalist. Later, when I asked one of the judges, I got to know that the panel understood the depth of my idea during the analysis process and that was the moment I realized, this is my place and I am meant to be an artist. And since then, there has been no looking back.

THE NAME GAME
To be frank, I don’t really have a fun story behind the name of my brand. I basically just looked for synonyms of the word crazy. The idea was to make custom pieces that when people looked at, went crazy over (in a positive way). Also, some people thought I was crazy for even considering doing this full time. So all this together resulted in ‘Unhinged Customs’.

FIRST CREATION
I don’t believe I have pictures of the first ever pair that was an order. But I surely remember that it was an aztec themed pair that I had made for a friend.

MARKET INSIGHT
There’s been a considerable spike in the number of people that have started doing custom pieces over the last couple of years. Which means that there are more and more people looking for things that are customized and that’s a fantastic news for all the creative minds.

SOCIAL MEDIA STANCE
For me, it has been fantastic for the last couple of years. I got on Instagram very late in comparison to most people. But I’m glad that I got on the platform sooner rather than getting on it now. It was definitely one of the biggest factors in helping me grow this business into something full time.

HURDLE ALERT
There are always multiple roadblocks along the way with doing something creative. Most of the roadblocks were in my own mind. For me, it started with whether I should even quit a stable job, then it’s whether this is ever going to get better, and maybe I’m not cut out to run a business and should just do art for fun on the side.  With time, I’ve come to realize that once the mental battles within ourselves are won, there’s an ample amount of resources over the internet to go get what you think you deserve. The internet takes away most of the roadblocks.

INSPIRATION & ELEMENTS
I am quite an observant person, so for me, inspiration comes from other artists, designers, painters, graffiti artists, sculptors and so many other customizers in the West that paved the way for me to be interested in sneaker customization. Going forward, I am working on incorporating more and more 3D elements into my artwork.

FUTURE FILE
The idea will always be to do bigger and better things. Work with bigger brands; come up with more unique designs and I am also looking forward to work on more canvases other than just sneakers. The more challenging the canvas, the better!

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