As the story goes, Najeeba Hayat, founder and creative director of up-and-coming footwear label Liudmila, was freshly graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in government when she decided that she wasn’t destined for a life of bureaucratic “banging your head against the wall.” Pursuing a lifelong love of style, Hayat moved to Milan and took a shoemaking course at the ArsSutoria School.