EAST MEETS WEST

In the current climate of rapid globalization, the lines between the western and eastern culture are increasingly blurred and undefined. This holds true more in the metropolitan cities across the world. Hailing from India, though residing in New York millennials like myself face it more. I conceptualized this deconstructed shirt around the juxtaposing of these circumstances and conflict and suffocation often felt.
I constructed and disintegrated each element of a standard college shirt and dislocated the positioning of the collars at the neckline or button plackets at the side seams. Creatively fabricating a personalized textile that tacitly translates this emotional conflict, I illustrated and laser cut an ‘L’ pattern that is repetitive, angular and sharp that represents the ‘no nonsense’ , business like ambience that is overwhelmingly present in the industrialized west. However manipulating these negative spatial values, I strongly juxtaposed the eastern fluidity physically pushing through fragile, softer and irregular pouches of ‘chikankari’ fabric, (a traditional embroidery style from Lucknow, India) through these defined, mundane and mechanized holes, reflecting the conflict and suffocation felt and emphasizing the contrast.