About this Event
Less is More: The Paradox of Minimalism in Contemporary Indian Fashion
For the upcoming Chat Masala, we welcome Arti Sandhu!
March 21, 2025 : Noon ET
India’s fashion industry experienced spectacular growth in the decades after economic liberalization initiated in the early 1990s. The positive outlook brought about by liberalization led to the development of a culture of design built on the backs of textile crafts centered around material excess informed by re-orientalist viewpoints as well as selective references to India’s freedom movement.
Most recently, a newer generation of designers shunned the visual exuberance that had become the hallmark of Indian couture. Yet, even as they refrain from the visual stereotypes made popular by the preceding design fraternity, they continue to foreground Gandhian principles and the sartorial politics of Indian nationalism in their design statements. This presentation examines the emergence of such minimalist fashion and highlights the paradoxes that emerge through anti-colonial, pre- and post-colonial references in such design.
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Arti Sandhu is currently an Associate Professor in the Fashion Program in the School of Design at DAAP, University of Cincinnati, USA. Her research is centered on contemporary Indian fashion and related design culture. She is the author of Indian Fashion: Tradition, Innovation, Style (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). She has also published articles on the contemporary Indian catwalk, craft and sustainable design practices, saree groups on social media, television soap-opera costumes, and drag queens. Arti is currently working on research projects relating to the growing discourse around decolonizing fashion studies, the role craft can play in fashioning sustainable design practices, and an ongoing digital ethnography on social media saree groups. Arti also occasionally writes for the digital fashion publication the Voice of Fashion.
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The “Chat Masala” guest lecture series highlights and honors designers from the South Asian diaspora around the globe. Chaat masala is an omnipresent mixture of spices that creates an unforgettable explosion of flavors. This series intends to memorialize the dynamic South Asian designers and educators who center South Asian design histories, and social and cultural narratives in their creative endeavors.
SADEA invites educators, researchers, historians, and practitioners from various design disciplines to share their vibrant practices, and journeys.
https://www.sadea.community/events
Event Venue
Online
USD 0.00
