ABOUT US
I am Anam Husain, an apparel designer, passionate about creating subtle textures and surfaces on fabrics. My design DNA is strongly linked to craftsmanship and my professors named me - Artisanal. I deeply value intricately laboured and ethically-produced craftsmanship - with a conscious focus on sustainability. I like to create products that one treasures like a piece of art forever. My inspirations arise from deep-rooted memories, nostalgic life moments and collectibles of the by-gone era. That said, nature inspires me even more. My creative universe is earthy, metallic and raw. Each natural scent ignites my creative spark. Thus, I relate every design collection I create with a particular scent. My latest collection Patina smells like petroleum (liquid gold) to me!
I love maximalism and for me more is always less. The challenge of harmonising the clash of different materials and colours excites me! I find poetry in what is decayed and weathered like leaves leaving their natural tint on fabrics. Well, blame my school for teaching me to create the best out of waste! I was once working on a project with block printers through which I discovered that when printing on a fabric, the pigment sieves down to the table cover and forms interesting one-of-a-kind prints. These prints are a play with traditional Indian motifs, take weeks to be made, create layers of many colors and can never be reproduced in the same way. To my surprise, the printers would throw away these fabrics as waste. In Patina, I have repurposed these fabrics with handloom Bhagalpuri linen.
Design to me is as emotional as it is tactile. I cannot simply draw on paper and call it a design. I see the fabric, feel and hear it before conveying my story through it. My collections Petrichor, Talisman and now Patina are an integral part of my life journey and stand for what I find beauty in - revaluing and appreciating the discarded materials, innovating Indian crafts and being kinder to the environment. I don't categorise my creativity into limited boxes of perceived beauty. I aspire to create art pieces that a wearer values and treats it the same way thus, lengthening its shelf life. My goal is to include and bring employment to as many craft artisans as possible through my work. Design has the power to bring change and I strongly believe that this is my calling.