Ever since I was a young girl I’ve known that I wanted to become a Fashion Designer. Over the years I’ve connected with my culture a lot more and have become interested in sharing it with the world. My dream is to have an Indo Western brand, “AK Designs” that showcases the fusion from East and West in my clothing. This was a great opportunity to make that dream sort of a reality. I created my brand with a couple of Indo Western outfits that I styled as well as added a sewing aspect and created a jacket and a cape like drape to go with another outfit.
I researched how to create a brand, and what that entails, and also different beginner type things that I could sew that had an Indo Western style to it. I surfed a lot of different websites, Instagram, and watched a lot of youtube to find what I liked. A big artistic influence of mine would have to be Hamel Patel and Masoom Minawala. These fashion influencers have done some takes on Indo Western clothing and how to style things, what accessories to include and what to pair things with. When I pitched my project to my friend and fellow classmate, Carly, she was inspired to create a clothing ad for my brand that even featured one of the things I made for this project. I was so grateful for this collaboration because it turned out to be a win-win for both of us. She was able to get footage for her advertisement and I was able to get some pictures for my brand in the outfits.
The 21st Century skill that improved the most was risk taking. If it wasn’t for this project I probably wouldn’t have taken the time to get to know my sewing machine before college. I would’ve waited until I had a structured class to teach me all of these skills. I’ve learned that I am really bad at taking things on myself if I don’t have someone with me to guide me along the way. This project forced me to come out of my comfort zone and be hands-on without relying on having the help of someone else to motivate me to get started. I’ve been inspired to take on some sewing projects over the summer which I’m excited about.
I did a lot of sewing and sketching all throughout this project and with the major I chose I know I’ll definitely be doing a lot more of that in the future. I feel that I have accomplished igniting my passion for sure. I think that I brought my vision to life, well part of it. This is just a start. I’m really happy that I chose to do this for my Zenith project and it has given me a sense of what it will take in the future to make this brand really happen.
If I could do this project over, I would definitely have chosen to create a website as well to showcase everything with my brand. Additionally, I would have also done more research about marketing and reaching out to a target audience to market my product. Adding a more business aspect to this project would open my eyes to the many other things I have to take into consideration to create this brand. Overall, I’m really proud of this project and so happy I decided to widen my horizons and take a risk to do a project that required me to be hands on with sewing. I faced many challenges but also overcame many fears and obstacles.