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    Now reading: the indian brand remixing traditional textiles and 90s r&b

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    the indian brand remixing traditional textiles and 90s r&b

    NorBlack NorWhite's Mriga Kapadiya and Amrit Kumar talk growing up on 90s Bollywood, hanging out with Indian grandmothers, and the politics of cultural appreciation.

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    Missy Elliott, village craftspeople, 90s Bollywood, and the Delhi pollution crisis all collide in India-via-Toronto label NorBlack NorWhite. Founders Mriga Kapadiya and Amrit Kumar grew up in the eclectic Ontario megacity before moving to India’s own frenzied multicultural epicenter — Bombay — in 2009. Their colorful designs refract the stories of traditional textile artisans through a lens of 90s nostalgia and nomadic energy. Think overalls and oversized trenches in muted metallics that echo both old school hip-hop and a post-apocalyptic oil spill.

    “India is a crazy place in terms of history and language and diversity — each region is like a country of its own,” Mriga tells i-D. “Exploring India is like exploring a bunch of countries, so having access to that in Bombay is really beautiful.” And, she notes, “it’s a very welcoming place to be living as a woman independently. You can’t do that in too many places around India.”

    In the last few years Mriga and Amrit have earned coveted co-signs from families weaving textiles in the Indian markets, young Indian artists, and fashion elites including Suzy Menkes and Frida Giannini. But it’s clear who they feel most indebted to. Mriga says they are still close friends with the generation-spanning Indian family who first introduced them to their ancient craft and with whom they share garment mockups and movie recommendations over Whatsapp. We talked to Mriga about reclaiming the stories of her ancestors, appreciation versus appropriation, and switching up the language of contemporary Indian fashion.

    I can hear Missy Elliott in your latest campaign video, and your website name-checks Michael Jackson as an influence. How heavily is NorBlack NorWhite inspired by musicians and music videos?
    We only really follow the fashion world from a cultural or performance standpoint. Musical performances and music videos have been a big inspiration. The “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” campaign video is so 90s, and a lot of our silhouettes and overall vibe is a throwback to the time we grew up in. We also loved 90s Bollywood growing up. The movies were super fun then and not as calculated as they are these days.

    Did you consume a lot of Indian films and other culture growing up in Toronto?
    Yeah, it’s crazy because we moved to the heart of Bollywood — Bombay — and that’s when we stopped watching any of the films. Now independent Indian cinema is getting much more interesting than the mass Bollywood stuff, which is becoming more of a monocultural kind of statement piece. A lot of the dancers are Russian dancers and they’re trying to make the films look more Hollywood, which kind of kills the vibe of it being its own thing. But we take a lot of inspiration from Bombay as a city. Just doing everyday things, it’s a place where you interact with a lot of different characters. It has a “New York of India” vibe where you see representation of regional India presented in a city context.

    Tell me about moving to India and meeting the local artisans for the first time.
    We went on a trip to Rajasthan, another state in India, wondering if we could work with tie-dye artisans. We decided to keep moving and went over to Kutch, in a state called Gujarat. We ended up Googling different artisans in the region and stumbled upon one NGO that had this amazing archival library of textiles from that specific region. We met the founder of one NGO called Kala Raksha and she took us to meet a huge family of her favorite tie-dye artisans in the region. They were using a really old school method called bandhani that we had worn growing up.

    We ended up staying there for a few days with the family and we hung out with the great-grandmother, and ended up experimenting by making some new designs with them, which were our first designs. We walked away with a bunch of textiles from that trip. We went back to Bombay and we built our first collection from those textiles. We still work with that family who share photos of the process over Whatsapp.

    You mentioned that Delhi’s current smog crisis was an inspiration for the new collection. Why did you want to reference the city’s pollution problem?
    That’s a theme that we have really been referencing over the last year. We were in Bombay for six years — it’s our home base — and ended up shifting our studio to Delhi just recently. It has been such a drastic change. Delhi is a desert city so has a very different flavor and landscape. Delhi is now the most polluted city in the world — it’s a different experience every day. It has been amazing for our focus and getting things done, but it has been a challenge to deal with the smog and all the cars in the city. We traveled back to Bombay, to shoot the “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” video, and were thinking about how much we appreciated being there by the sea, and how the colors pop in a very different way. Our eyes had actually changed focus in Delhi by getting used to more muted colors. We wanted to bring the two together, the greys and the muted colors of Delhi against the ocean tones and the classic sunsets we experienced in Mumbai.

    How do you approach cultural appreciation vs appropriation? Do the stories change when they are incorporated into the wardrobes of white people?
    It’s a tricky one, we have discussions all the time with our friends who are artists of color living in both western contexts and Indian contexts. For us, the most important thing, when we create anything or when we put anything out into the world, is that it is authentic to how we live and how we create and how we interact with space and artisans and communities. We take our relationships really seriously and carefully, and people we do work with, we consider family. From a creation standpoint, for us it’s obviously cultural appreciation, honoring India’s stories and the artisanal processes that we didn’t have the privilege of learning about in a school setting. We are hoping to also educate people on our journey moving to India and how we appreciate the world growing up as diaspora and immigrants of Toronto.

    How do you feel about the aesthetics of India being replicated by non-Indian brands?
    It frustrates us that so many brands come into India and use the artisanal workmanship but don’t credit anything as Indian textiles. So many people produce out of here, and the beautiful silk and embroidery and sequin work is taken for granted. Textiles are finished in Italy or France and so they’re never credited as being from here. It’s not about just being in India — it’s about respecting the lineage of artisans who created the space for it to even happen. And also value the price of it. People come here and think third world equals cheap, and it’s like, “A person spent 20 days making three meters of fabric that you are now valuing at 1/100 of what it should cost.” Sometimes textiles have special or spiritual imagery attached to them, and people take it and simplify it and sell it for $10. People aren’t being educated on why textiles are important in an ecosystem.

    With the internet, the boundaries of cultures are so blurry, but as long as people are asking questions and being critical and understanding the stories of where things are coming from, then I think we are doing our jobs. There are people behind the textiles, so why shut them out?

    What is it like dealing with the diversity of people who like NorBlack NorWhite as a brand?
    It’s interesting, because in the beginning, a lot of the lovers were obviously Indian communities — young artists in India who are already in some sort of creative field and would reach out to us and thank us for pushing boundaries of what it means to be in the fashion zone in India. We took that to heart because we definitely are speaking to the Indian communities since we are based out of here, and trying to switch up the language of contemporary fashion here. And also, being Indians who grew up outside of India, obviously the diaspora outside of India takes a liking to us, because they relate to our vision and how we see things. As for non-Indians liking the brand, we can’t hate on people who genuinely respect the process and like our work. We know what we’re trying to push with our vision, and as long as we’re staying authentic to our process, then we’re cool with it.

    norblacknorwhite.com

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    Text Hannah Ongley

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