Currently about to complete my freshman year, I am majoring in fashion design at Parsons. I am Indian by origin. The realm or design and art has always played a huge role in my life. Coming from an extremely cultural and colorful country, a lot of my works are inspired from my vivid life experiences that are so deeply rooted in me. At the same time, I’ve spent a lot of my recent years in countries abroad. My interaction with city of New York and all the different kinds of people here especially have come to influence my design styles. While I’m learning new concepts and developing new ideas every day, I wish to believe that I’m not doing away with my native design styles and beliefs but am building upon it.

 

I usually tend to focus a lot on detail as seen in my art works and portrait sketches. I see this trend not only in my drawing style but also my fashion works. This idea of detail and luxury tends to make me more aligned towards the realm of couture. However, over this semester I see myself experimenting with a lot of contemporary styles and trying my best to breakthrough my comfort zone. As I really haven’t made up my mind about what kind of fashion I wish to pursue or which subdivision of it, I want to experiment and try my best to leave no stone unturned in order to discover my true calling.

 

I felt a lot of my Soft Structures work was able to hold relevance in all my other classes. As our focus in that class was collapsible structures and experimenting with the materiality of textiles, I was able take some of my learnings from there into my Space and Materiality class.

Also that it was due to all my other classes that I would enter into collaborations or see them happening around me which influenced me greatly to pick the topic of ‘Collaborations’ as my focus for Studio and Seminar.

The project I enjoyed the most and found interesting were almost all of my projects from my Soft Structures class, I was able to gain a lot of knowledge about the basics of fashion design and equip myself for sophomore year. The projects were challenging but never disappointing. There was always an interesting outcome.

I thoroughly enjoyed observing my collaborations as well. It was great just sit down and contemplate on human nature, relations and how it comes into play when two or more people work together.

 

I think the highlights of my Freshman year would be my final for my Time class and my Soft Structures final.

Prior to coming to New York I was going through a rather rough patch emotionally. This prevented me from thinking and working freely. The time class served as a miracle to me because the entire class was based about documenting our life journey so far and creating a movie on it. This pushed me to face all my problems and fight them in its face. It helped me recover and take it all in a stride. Creatively, it exposed me to a lot of contemporary styles and ideas. The people I came to know in that class and the works I got to see and get inspired from will always remain etched in my heart. Time allowed my creative freedom kick in and explore and breakthrough my limitations.

The process to create the movie began from trying to describe our life in 5 simple photographs, an essay – out of which we made our song/audio, collecting our sounds, and finally recording footage. The movie could either be a literal representation or a metaphorical one.

 

I see my Soft Structures final as a continuation to my process of attaining the creative freedom that I am in search of. Semester one ended on a great note for me and now was the time to actually test what I had learnt and discovered about myself. While most of my projects towards the beginning of the semester seemed very generic of me, my final soft structures project took me by surprise.

I wanted to create a wearable and collapsible container. My inspiration was an accordion. I experimented with the materiality of fabric a lot as this was one of our classes main themes. I followed along my original ideas and stumbled upon my final result. It was pure experimentation. I count this as a milestone in my journey as I feel like I’ve finally reached somewhere.

   

     

At this point I am finally getting to know my likes and dislikes in terms of design. I am determining my aesthetics and trying to approach fashion with a fresh mindset free of all limitations and barriers. I want to explore and experiment more. I want to just have fun with different styles until I finally find my true calling. I feel like my goal now is to discover.

I would definitely like to learn how to 3D print and laser cut! Essentials!!