Aarabhi's Recap of the Decade

January 01, 2020By Aarabhi Sivaraman

So looking back, it's clear the 2010's were my decade for learning. I started it in school, working on my A-levels and ended it where I've always wanted to be, working on my own business. Here's a little recap...

2010

My main focus at this point in time was art. It was my favourite subject probably because it was the one where I got my highest grades. I really hated school, mainly because I knew exactly what I wanted to do and that was fashion.

Well, here's me! A whole decade ago, taken on a school trip to Florence, Italy. It was probably one of the best places I've ever been and of course the gelato was amazing. We walked from gallery to gallery sketching as we went, mainly looking for inspiration for our final pieces which I think were on portraits.

2011

It's me again! This was taken on my last day of school, very exciting! I think I spent most of the year working on my portfolio and applying for art foundation courses. I visited a few, went to a few interviews but Ravenbourne was my top choice and that's where I ended up studying. We began the year by trialling a few different creative paths like graphics and film before we had to make our final choices.

2012

This was a pretty big and exciting year. From what I remember, it was the year I focussed solely on fashion. I learnt different techniques on how to create inspiration and the general fundamentals of how to design.

I liked to create more intricate pieces, below is an image from my final piece and those white lines you see are all small beads (I'm guessing this is where the whole crazy bead lady thing started!) I always found the details more important than silhouette and this is something that I have carried through to today.

And...later on that year, I started at Istituto Marangoni. The one place I had been desperate to go to since I was around 14 or 15 and this is probably where it all really began!

2013

Each term at this point was a different project but term 3 of the first year was the first full collection that I designed. Looking back on it now, I really don't know what I was thinking or how bad my illustrations were! The growth from year 2 to year 3 was very dramatic!

The above image is from my final first year exam...just typical me with all the detail!

The first year of this degree was mainly learning the basics and year two gave us more space to explore and experiment. This was a lot more fun plus, although my sewing skills were awful, it definitely gave me a lot more confidence in sewing and pattern cutting.

2014

This may have been my favourite project that I worked on in the 2nd year. It was a combination of the work of Castelbajac and Jeff Koons. I then decided to add Furby to the mix and created the "Furbylicious" collection. It was fun, bright and colourful. Once the 3rd year started, I was more confident in my design abilities and my pattern cutting (as much as I hated doing it) was getting better.

2015

We're halfway through the decade, yay! For this final year, we focussed on designing and creating one collection and our portfolios. With this final collection, the main goal was to try and get selected for the final year fashion show. I was very fortunate to be selected for the 80th Anniversary show which took place in Milan.

I had to have some pieces made in India and I handmade the remaining, a lot of them made with my actual blood, sweat and tears! I would watch a different boxset while I worked on the beading and was so unbelievably happy once I had finally finished and put the different parts together. After all that I was ready to graduate and then the fashion show took place in September.

2016

In 2016, I'd graduated and like many new graduates, a little lost. I was looking for jobs, trying to tweak my portfolio and ended up working for a company I had interned for the year before. It was a womenswear brand however there was no designing, it was a desk job and honestly...it was my nightmare! I don't think I'd ever been so miserable. I was dealing with shipping and logistics and I felt like all I really did was send emails and call FedEx.

I was still applying for design jobs but getting a paying design job is very difficult and this is when I started working on designs for my own brand because if nobody wanted to give me a job, I should just give one to myself, right?!

2017

And here we are, my first collection. It was very exciting and especially when I got my first orders although it was crushing whenever items were returned. This was actually the second collection I designed after graduating, the first was what is now the AW18 collection. I used spare fabric that was left over from my graduate collection to create these pieces.

2018

I started off this year by travelling to India. We were looking into working with different factories and organisations. This trip is actually what inspired the SS19 collection.

Ta-da! In September of this year, we launched the AW19 collection which is what I was most excited about. There were so many pieces in this collection that I absolutely loved and still do.

2019

This was a very exciting year, we launched two very different collections however both were colourful and heavily embellished. Both of these were actually designed during the previous year so producing the pieces was the main focus.

My main focus in 2019, as the designer and owner, was looking at what direction to take the brand. The SS20 collection designed in 2019 and released in March 2020 will give you a better idea on what our plans are for the upcoming decade. We want to create pieces that are wearable, comfortable, ethical and still make a statement.