To capture the debut collection, Mixup Mystification by recent Polimoda Fashion School graduate Devanshi Monga, Florence based photographer Lucilla Bellini was inspired by a romantic location in Florence, an ancient villa from the 19th century with an abandoned green house. “I decided to shoot there to give a melancholic cut of the collection and a sadness vision of two premature widows” Bellini told Eclectic.

Devanshi Monga is a young designer from New Delhi, India. After graduating with a Business major from high school, she decided to pursue her long time dream of studying fashion design and enrolled herself at Polimoda International Institute of Fashion Design and Marketing in Florence, Italy. Her experience from extensive travel abroad and being brought up in a multicultural environment have enabled her to stir up her own interpretation of East and West.

For Mixup Mystification,  she took inspiration from the child widows of colonial India. Particularly, intrigued by their wretched life of the widows and the lifestyle they were forced to adopt. According to the primitive norms set by the patriarchal society, these condemned widows were forced to lead a very simple life in seclusion and were deprived of any color and worldly pleasures for the rest of their lives. Perplexed by these strange rules created by the society and juxtaposing the ideas of ‘what society expects us to do’ and ‘what we as individuals want to do’, inspired her.

“Everything is simple till we complicate it. Keeping the same idea in mind, I ventured into experimentation with embroideries and use them in an unconventional manner. Taking inspiration from the clothing of the Garasia tribe of Rajasthan, found in the ethnic regions of India, the child widows and the Britishers in India, I embarked on the journey of developing this collection and trying to find a way to express myself” explained Monga.