A Message To The World

Creating is allowing yourself to freely express the craziness that exists inside your mind. The ability to put your thoughts and emotions into a project means there a piece of you in everything you create. The curious mind running wild inside you to the point it becomes necessary to free up some space in your head through any form of art. I love the idea of having a 3-dimensional piece that can be touched, worn and smelt formed by my ideas, thoughts and emotions and having the ability to introduce myself through this form of art makes it that much more enjoyable.

I was introduced to fashion at a young age, where I used the internet to learn to design and soon realised my love for it. I spent countless hours just learning this new skill and countless more critiquing and improving myself. This then evolved into making costumes for my siblings for World Book days and every other event that would allow me to create something new, where I would design, cut and then piece together a new garment. I barely knew how to make a garment but I would use my imagination and my scissors to decide how to put the final garment together without any experience or much understanding. When kids would go out and play with their friends or had their phones to entertain them, I would sit alone in my room just designing clothes that I dreamed of making a reality one day.

Throughout these years, one of the most important lessons that I have learnt is to always be true to myself. This can be in the form of not needing validity from others but rather ensure that what you are creating represents you and speaks for you without the need for any explanation. I’ve realized the power clothing holds and it amazes me how you can send a message through clothing. Garments can become a visual representation of everything that I am and without any need for translation as it’s a universally understood language.

I remember when I was younger, the lack of South Asian or even Muslim women in the media meant that I viewed myself and compared myself to standards that were incomparable and biologically impossible. I remember feeling like an outcast because I rarely saw people like me on the cover of magazines, in fashion or in the entertainment business. This also affected the career path I had dreamed of because at the time, I wasn’t sure if a Muslim girl could be a fashion designer and my parents hoped I would go into a respected profession. Unfortunately for me, fashion was not one of them. I asked myself; are my dreams going against the norm for a South Asian girl? What would people think of me? Can I be successful as a Bengali Muslim? I remember thinking about this and wondering if I wanted to study fashion in university, if I could turn my hobby and love for fashion into a career and if there was a space for a Muslim woman to make home and pay tribute to her identity. I quickly realised that even if there wasn’t any room, I would have to create a space for myself, I would have to make myself heard.

I was in my final year at University as a Fashion and Textile student when I had to pick a topic which I would base my entire collection on and then remembered how the lack of diversity had impacted my life and knew that I just had to create a collection that would shine a positive light on Muslim women, and hopefully become a source of empowerment for them just how I inspired to be when I was younger. It’s funny how sometimes we look for inspiration elsewhere when we have easy access to inspiration much closer to home and within ourselves. Our whole being is made up of our experiences and the culture we are surrounded by which we can easily tap into for inspiration.

I decided early on that this would be a vibrant collection, which would be experimental in both textiles and shape. It took me weeks to be able to perfect my collection line-up as I had so many directions, I wanted to take the collection in and was bursting with ideas. I finally decided a collection that is both modern but displays the history of Islamic art was the correct direction for my project. I used Islamic architecture and art, which is deeply rooted in my religion to create garments that are experimental and unexpected. I loved the idea of creating garments that used technology and decided to incorporate laser cutting within the project. The use of images and bright geometric patterns across the collection modernises the traditional geometric patterns found in Islamic art. I spent weeks toiling and creating new and interesting shapes and digitalising patterns to create the perfect garments. I loved making mistakes because it was from these mistakes that I was able to create new unplanned designs that I would not have been able to do had I got it right the first time.

I believe fashion is all about telling a story and through my collection I could see my story, my life being told in a physical form. Suddenly, what I used to do as a hobby is being used to create something I hope to be a lot bigger than I could ever imagine it to be. It was all part of the process and a learning experience and I loved every second of it. I love it when people would appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that went into my projects as it gives me a sense of accessibility, where I’m able to access their emotions through what I create.

The luxury of being able to simply create and have access to the tools I need makes me feel so blessed. I’m able to chase my dreams and finally allow myself to live out the dreams that I felt I would only be able to achieve in my dreams.

I can’t wait to start on my next collection and carry on creating more messages to share with the world!