Profession / role:

Textile Designer / Upcycler

Company / organisation:

Upcycle Cotier

My primary role in relation to fashion is:

Designer, Retailer, Manufacturer, Photographer, Consultant

I am looking to discover or buy

retailers, upcycle professionals, buyers

About me / About business or organisation:

I am a Textile Designer by education from the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. I started Upcycle Cotier early in 2010. I do projects with recycling of waste (fiber, yarn, fabric, etc) with various textile companies. Along with the projects, i also design a product line with vintage textile and also bale ends of fabric. I also do a lot of photography and travel extensively in India.

Career history / Company history:

* Usha Sewing Machine Stop motion advert Animation project with Famous Animation Studio.
The video is available at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZGfG6yR_YY

* Project with Welpsun
Designed 2 bed collections, with coordinating products for a theme of Indian birds. The project also involved styling the printed bed stories, with accent cushions and packaging.
The collections were packaged in a beautiful ‘Hanger for theWardrobe’, where the quilt, 4 pillow cases were packed into a fabric cover of the same print as the bed, like a cover for suits.

* Upsykle Cotier
Founded a Re-cycle studio.
The idea was to use old~vintage~un-used textile raw material, like vintage Sari’s, un-used old shirts or denims, torn sails etc, to re-design them to upmarket bags.
The bags are 100% hand crafted and styled for a complete transformation and each bag is one of its kind and has no replica.

* Welspun Indian Ltd.
The job involved research, strategy, story boarding and product development for each season for the Spaces brand. The story boarding and research was to give print and colour direction. Products included, bed programs, home textile products, bath and kitchen textiles. The job also involved shooting the products, presentation to buyers and Visual Merchandising. The products were further taken into the Bespoke customizing houses category that Welspun had recently ventured into.
The job also involved doing projects for the American market, styling bed programs for buyers like JC Penny, etc.

* Fashion Designer ~ Krishna Mehta.
The job involved design development, research and strategy on projects with Westside and a Scandinavian brand called 'Indiska'.

* Textile Designer ~ Neeru Kumar.
The job involved developing textiles using surface techniques, prints and wovens.
It also included handling buyers and production.
The collections were designed for domestic and the international market. The products ranged from home linen, garments, scarves, bags and accessories.
The product range for the home market included collections for women's garments, jewelery and home textiles, like cushions, bedcovers and light accessories.
The product range for the international market was more concentrated on designing specific collections for Pret a Porter (Paris), Hiemtextile (Frankfurt), Maison and Objekt (Paris), specific clients and buyers.

* Project with Fabindia Overseas Pvt. Ltd.
The brief was to support the design team to generate new niche market products.
The project included re-looking at the existing vegetable block-prints of Fabindia in areas of Rajasthan, particularly Bagru and Barmer and re-designing them to fit into a contemporary look.
The prints had to be designed for garment yardage, bed linen and sarees.

* Internship with Hidesign, Pondicherry.
The project brief was to design stationeries like books, diaries, letter pads and work table products for men, using leather with other raw materials.