Fashion is the easiest way to tell someone who you are, where you’re from, but it’s also something that can make you feel good about yourself.
Ishita Wadhwa is a Fashion major from India graduating in May of this year. Her senior collection pulls inspiration from her upbringing in India and the British colonization there. She details her experience growing up in a colonized country and how it affected her and others around her. “Something that a lot of people don’t know about a lot of Asian cultures is after British colonialism, a lot of Asian cultures became insecure about what their cultures are.” Rather than focusing on the negative aspects of the British colonization, though, she tries to highlight the positives in her collection. “I wanted to show the western culture and Indian culture together.”
Fashion is being pulled in a vast number of directions nowadays, but Wadhwa found her niche in her homeland of India. “I think there’s a gap for contemporary clothing and even contemporary resort wear in India. There’s nothing that had a resort wear kind of feel to it. The high-end brands sell the same clothes, so everyone wears the same thing. I think there are a few voids that I could go into in the Indian market.”
As for her collection, she created stunning all-white looks inspired by a group of men in a small village of India. “I started exploring silhouettes of men from villages in India and I found there was something very modern about it and the way their silhouettes looked. It’s very street to the point that if you put it on a modern Indian or Western woman it would fit.” She expressed that coming up with a concept was the hardest of her entire process as “the concept sets the tone for the collection.” Once she solidified her concept, she created 100-150 sketches of ideas for her Senior collection, dwindling it down from there. She finds inspiration from many Indian designers such as Anamika Khanna, Sabyasachi Mukherji and Shantanu & Nikhil. Her all cotton, no metal or plastic, and flowy western resort wear sets her apart from designers of her home country, marrying her American and Indian sides. While she is not in the fashion show this year, she has created a collection that states a strong message of finding the beauty in the ugly.
Ishita believes that SCAD has prepared her for the fashion industry because of the professionalism in the classroom and ability to speak with industry professionals. “I think the way that we study in the (fashion) classes and how we do our entire collection is closely related to how the fashion industry does it. It’s a process of evolving, and learning how to deal with that is so instrumental.”
After graduation, she sees herself working for a designer in India for five to seven years then starting her own brand of Indian-inspired contemporary resort/street wear in hopes to launch a new era of fashion in her homeland.
Written by Victoria Long
Photos courtesy of Ishita Wadhwa