The Voice of Fashion
Letter from the Editor: A Tech-Tile Moment
TVOF’s third anniversary edition is about a moment as well as the movement of fashion. It underlines liberty, community and technology
Even two years back, we wouldn’t have thought it smart to create a special edition without a story with one of India’s top fashion designers. It was a formula, stamped in one’s head. Over the years, having ideated with numerous editorial teams on special issues, it would be de rigueur to strategically add something “big”, which meant commercially A-league. A special issue would be incomplete without the currency of someone’s success or a design language loved by the readership. It was an easy way, let’s admit. Hitch your wagon to a star, as children’s books say, and you will go far.
No longer. Fashion’s unstoppable unshackling, its persistent liberation from formulae (even as we must be mindful of new ones tightening their grip), has given me a new lightness as a “senior journalist”. Haha. Now put down those heavy jholas lady, as I say to myself.
Liberty, community, technology—the three words which bind this third anniversary edition signify a leap of editorial faith. It is about celebrating this moment as The Voice of Fashion (TVOF), India’s first and only daily digital magazine which launched in 2018 celebrates three supple years.. It is as much about the movement that unfolds around fashion, keeping us all on our toes. New clothes and bespoke couture does not fascinate as much as the way it is worn, who is wearing it, how digitally innovative it is, and what it signifies.
New communities are being created around fashion and beauty all over the world. Among them is the Gen Z demographic with its near absolute rejection of everything that defines Indian fashion or what our designers make, the passionate search for thrift stores, logoless style, the endless personalisation of rewear and reuse.
To top it all, fashion’s tech-tile nature. If you are in India, you cannot imagine fashion without exquisite, unique textiles, many of them handwoven. All the same we can no longer envision fashion expression anywhere without being tech savvy, digitally agile and virtually voluptuous. The stories in this issue spin on this tech-tile axis.
Cover girl Aaliyah Kashyap, a Gen Z influencer is a YouTube girl and a social media inhabitant. Technology is her narrative tool and if you read her interview with Snigdha Ahuja, she clearly has a story to tell. On the other hand, far from social media’s playing fields where gold, silver and bronze clash with each other every day, there is a heart-warming story by Darshita Goyal on twinning tailors from Kerala. Udhaykumar and Raveendran, a pair of tailors and best friends wear matching clothes to celebrate their unflinching bond and friendship. A community of just two.
Far away from Kerala, Assam-based writer and artist Parismita Singh’s piece on the art of Sonam Yeshi and the abiding legacy of Norbulingka (the Dharamshala institute for Buddhist art and culture) textiles as homecoming for exiled Tibetans argues strongly for the resilience of communities. And how some aspects are realised through textiles. Whereas Karishma Upadhyay, author of the book Parveen Babi: A Life, writes about the lost freedoms of Hindi film stars. Muzzled even when they barely growled. Even as some liberties are gathered to God, others are sprinting away fast from the former lines of control.
This edition is a movement for me as a journalist. From one kind of content creation to another. When I read Sohini Dey’s stories on the future of beauty and technology and why India needs digital clothing, I felt excitedly transported in time from the days when, as fashion journalists, we would chase charming couturier Rohit Bal for an interview and he would be elusive!
One of the reasons I love my job is because it involves daily, persistent and planned research to keep up with entries like DressX, an e-commerce marketplace for digital clothing brands or Auroboros, a British couture label whose RTW is purely digital. It is not just learning which of course, is a constant for any of us, but I am mutating in my fashion thinking and writerly imagination. What enthuses me is the TVOF team which once offered an idea matrix like ‘Liberty, Community, Technology’ pushes it so far and deep and wide that I marvel at the possibilities fashion offers in experimentation, materiality, wearability, thinking and reasoning.
Finally, Ban-Ray. Our rather special story, if I may. Inspired by Netflix’s recently released four-part series Ray, we invited four fashion designers, all Bengalis (community!) to choose one character from these four Netflix stories based on filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s immortal work and then style themselves as that character. Sounak Sen Barat of House of Three in Bengaluru, Pranay Baidya in Delhi, Navonil Das of Dev r Nil and Paromita Banerjee, both in Kolkata, spared no effort, excitement or enthusiasm to become The Ray-Naissance people.
Bahrupiya, Tantrik, Musafir Ali and Didi, this is creativity, community, liberty all at once mounted through technology—a truly tech-tile photo feature.
I wait to hear your thoughts on this unshackled, non-formulaic, anniversary edition.
A big thank you to all our readers for becoming the community that enjoys fashion through untried avenues giving us the confidence to live up thus to fashion’s ultimate promise.
Banner: The digital cover of The Voice of Fashion’s third anniversary issue featuring content creator Aaliyah Kashyap.
Digital Cover Credits:
Creative direction and styling: Ekta Rajani
Photographs: Sushant Kadam
Hair and Makeup: Guia Bianchi, Anima Creative Management
Assistant stylists: Mandar Deshmukh and Swity Shinde
Production: P. Productions
