The IKKIVI Podcast: Exploring Fashion, Culture and Values · Nivi Murthy

S3E10: Juggling Business & Life: Fashion Entrepreneur Shahili Gomes on her Dual Roles | Shahili Gomes

·56 min·3 clips

Shahili describes a traumatic London pregnancy during COVID, with severe depression and over 30 kilos gained.

Shahili starts with a quiet breaking point. She talks about feeling mentally and physically lost while mothering, running businesses, and living through an unhappy stretch. Self-care is not treated like a pretty add-on here. It is the thing that keeps her upright, and her fitness routine sounds practical, protective, and still very much in use. The conversation stays close to the everyday. Shahili is introduced as co-founder of the Design Collective, a Colombo multi-brand clothing store representing 70 plus South Asian designers, and she is also carrying another creative role. Her life moves between Sri Lanka, Abu Dhabi, family, travel, and the pressure of being needed in too many places at once. Remote work is where the episode gets most honest. Shahili admits she is still learning and almost wants to hand the question to her co-founder. Her answer, imperfect but caring, is availability: calls, WhatsApp, quick replies, and little promises to circle back. That care costs her. Time differences slow things down, create misunderstandings, and leave one side awake when the other is done for the day. The phone turns into a doorway that never quite closes, and work starts leaking into home in ways she calls unhealthy. Moving helps. Abu Dhabi narrows the time gap with Sri Lanka, and going back more often seems to steady both Shahili and the team. The close is warmer and looser: Instagram shows a partial version of her life, beautiful bits beside candid complaints. The episode works because it does not polish her into a founder lesson. It leaves her as a person keeping a business, a family, and herself moving.

As heard by us

Fashion, family, and remote work meet in a conversation shaped by pressure and persistence.

Shahili Gomes-McCoy reads as someone trying to keep too many worlds in one place at once: fashion retail, motherhood, and the constant pull of being reachable.

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Why you'd press play

When your life and business both run on Sri Lanka time and Abu Dhabi time.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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