Designs that clicked
Just because something looks good doesn’t mean it’s useful. And just because something is useful does not make it beautiful.
That’s where a designer intervenes,” believes Shravana Sachdeva, a final-year student of Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories, National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Delhi, talking about her product range that was on display at an exhibition entitled Promethean.
Not just usability, but creativity loaded with out of the box ideas, consumer demand, trends and market research went into Sachdeva’s project of silver bar-ware and serve-ware for the silver lifestyle brand, Episode.
The final semester of the Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories programme at NIFT is a testing ground for graduating students as they undertake real life designs and make products for specific industries. The focus is towards intensive industry orientation and student involvement. And Promethean is an exhibition that showcases the final products made by these young, creative minds. “The exhibition comes after six months of rigorous project work, where students are placed at the company they are working on a project for. The assignment is their first stint professionally. They get to see what is creative and practical,” says Shakti Sagar Katre, Assistant Professor, Department of Fashion and Lifestyle Accessories, NIFT.
This year, students had sponsors in companies like Tanishq, Philips, Epi-sode, Magppie, Swarovski, Samsonite, Happily Unmarried and more. The mediums picked by them ranged from gold, diamond, silver, crystal and semi-precious stones to leather, ceramics, terracotta, wood, plastic and paper.
For her project, Sanchita Tucker created a wedding gift range. Her collection of playful gifts for one’s friends on their wedding night was not just thoughtful, but also humorous. “My project focus was to find humour in everyday products,” says the young designer, whose collection will be on retail shelves soon.
A few other out of the box ideas included sheet and wire crochet on silver gifts (with crochet work used as the surface finish), cricket-inspired bar-ware, the use of Swarovski elements on stainless steel etc. Pranati Jain worked with stainless steel and ceramics to create dinnerware that has a blend of traditional Indian design elements and contemporary sensibilities of steel. “I have used Indian art forms such as kalamkari and Mughal heritage to design products that are acceptable to the urban eye,” she says.
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