The first time I spoke to Rohan Mirza, the twenty-three-year-old had just debuted his first collection and was still sifting through constant social media tags raving about his nude illusion shirt with raised skin on the back, signifying sports jersey branded directly onto the skin – or skin shirt, made completely of silicone. Simultaneously touching…
“Sooraj has a uniform,” said the stylist Disha Pai, reflecting on styling the rapper Hanumankind, or Sooraj Cherukat, on some of his earliest projects. “It’s a baniyan and a pant.” Not much has changed since then, considering that’s exactly how the Bangalore-based rapper skrrted onto our screens last year in Big Dawgs. While his white…
It was on a cold evening that the scent of sandalwood, especially prepared by Guerlain, wafted in the air as guests entered The Met for the opening of The Costumes of Royal India on 2nd December 1985. As always, it was organised by Diana Vreeland, former editor-in-chief of American Vogue, who had become a consultant…
“I have a lot of photos with chins touching,” said Melissa Schriek over the phone from her Amsterdam home. We were going through some of the photographs from her last book, Ode: an exploration of the dynamics of female friendship. “I like that it’s almost a mouth,” she said, “It’s also very intimate when your…
Yellow cap paired with a blue satin shirt, Grace Jones has arrived at The Savoy. Her thumbnail has a tiny red crown stamped on it. It is 1981 and Sharon Smith is doing her rounds as a camera girl in the Midtown Manhattan club, when she approaches Grace with her Polaroid. It was not the…
When the filmmaker Elizabeth Ai was pregnant, she found herself scouring through old family albums, looking for something from her own childhood which she could share with her daughter in a couple of years. That’s when she chanced upon photographs of her uncles and aunts in Orange County, listening to New Wave in the ‘80s…