Delhi-based designer Ashita Singhal, winner of Nexa presents the Spotlight, upcycles scrap to create luxury fabric

Designer Ashita Singhal poses with her weavers at the Lakmé Fashion Week X FDCI 2024 at Jio World Convention centre in Mumbai

Ashita Singhal’s clothes look avant garde, but did you know they are made of waste? “At Paiwand Studio, we believe beggars can’t be choosers, so we use everything we get,” laughs Ashita, founder of the studio, which upcycles textile waste and turns it into fabric.

This year, the Delhi-based designer won the seventh edition of the Nexa presents the Spotlight award (a programme that gives young fashion designers a platform to showcase their work) at Lakme Fashion Week in association with FDCI. As part of that, she got to showcase her collection at the fashion week, and took to the ramp, to take a bow, holding hands with her weavers, who she believes are an integral part of her journey.

A model walks the ramp in a creation by Ashita Singhal

 

The theme this season was Urbane. “For me, Urbane is Delhi and I wanted to show my love-hate relationship with the city. I don’t like mass consumerism but at the same time I like that this city also gives us the freedom to do so much, and there is diversity. We took inspiration from the city dwellers. The collection is called City Blues,” she says over a call from her studio in Noida.

City Blues features street wear-inspired saris, jackets and more… There were also garments created by intertwining two dresses, and a woven outfit that involves no tailoring. Colours of this collection range from black, indigo, blue to plum, olive, rust and white. “In our studio, we don’t control the colours. We do not dye either. Whatever waste we get we upcycle it,” Ashita says.

 

This is not Ashita’s first outing at fashion week. She was part of the Circular Design Challenge in 2021 but she showcased virtually, given the guidelines dictated by the Covid pandemic. This year, it was live. For a 15-minute presentation, the team at Paiwand worked for a month, covering 13-hour shifts. “We were making every minute count and wanted to give the audience a 360-degree presentation and keep them engaged,” says the 28-year old.

Everything in the presentation was made from waste, including the accessories. The idea to work with waste came to Ashita when she was in a pattern-making class. “Within three hours we generated so much waste; the entire floor was filled with textile scrap,” she says, adding that she joined joined the fashion world but did not want to be part of the waste it creates. “If this happens in the classroom, imagine what happens in the industry. The fashion industry is the second-most polluting industry in the world,” she says.

 

“I launched Paiwand Studio in 2018, it was my graduation project. I wanted to work with waste. The best gateway to sustainability is by using local materials. Being a Delhiite, I started asking ‘what is my local material?’ I could see waste all around me,” she adds. After collaborating with clusters in Delhi to weave fabric out of waste, Ashita now has an in-house handloom unit. Here, the team not only celebrates handloom weaving and craftsmanship but also experiments with techniques. “We have woven bamboo on handloom, and used multiple techniques like hand embroidery, hand-knitting and applique.”

 

Initially the weaving process incorporated materials like cotton, silk and natural fibres but soon she realised that is not where the actual problem lay. So she started weaving polyester, flex, leather, knit weaves and hand-woven upcycled leather… Upcycling is a complex project. It takes a day to create one metre of fabric from waste, right from cutting to joining. Ashita gets her raw materials from export houses in Noida, ragpickers, and also artisans in Gujarat. “We also receive lot of scrap as donations from designers and individuals,” she adds.