Content for Atypical
A Concrete Conclusion
Greytone, A celebration of mixed media
Rewriting the rules of fashion, Indian designers like Aditi Sharma are creating wearable art.The Mussoorie-born designer went from being a full time interior designer to designing jewellery. A combination of hard work blended with eight years of design experience got her to “experiment and abuse the fluid nature of concrete”. Carrying her ever growing love for this material to the other side, led to creating ‘Greytone’ in 2017.
The name being an ode to concrete, is inspired by art, design and primarily architecture. This modern age jewellery is accented with metal, every piece being refined by hand through an organic process reflecting minimalism and simplicity, it makes an aesthetic statement. Highlighting the primary neutral tone of cement - grey and white with brushed brass and stainless finish, gives it an unexpected yet one-of-a-kind finish that demands attention.
Aditi, 32, recalls her first engagement with concrete in 2014 during her sabbatical in Budapest while working with a Hungarian designer, who had mastered the art of using this material to create anything and everything in cement. Being a Domus Academy graduate, her first stint in this direction was to make lifestyle products, thus, creating distinctive art jewellery. What gave her the ‘kick’ to develop more, was the one time she wore one of her designs to a party and gained a lot of attention.
“Being a brand in alternate jewellery, using concrete as a primary material is quite challenging due to the fast moving seasons of the fashion industry and the limitations of the material”, says Aditi. Re-wiring the idea of accessories from traditional material created from unconventional sources, Greytone tries to identify people, who understand that in order to build a personal brand, one must follow their own beat.
Before launching a line, the brand gives a lot of thought to each decision, from the inspiration to the research. Working alternatively as an interior designer gives Aditi a lot of scope to experiment and view things from a different perspective.
Greytone’s collection stands out when worn on simple silhouettes, reflecting simplicity whilst creating a bold statement. Impressive geometric shapes with clean lines, textures and neutral tones along with managing appropriate weight through right mixtures has made this material suitable for neckpieces. Each piece taking up to 21 days to make, Aditi walks us through its process, “after moulding, it is cured in water for 20 days, making the material stronger and less susceptible to cracking” and later are sandpapered to achieve the perfect finish.
Retailing at Ogaan and Pernia’s, along with having created an exclusive collection for Good Earth, Greytone offers pendants and statement neck pieces through their online portal as well. Pieces titled Art Deco draw their inspiration from the Art Deco Style with its form reminding you of the Chrysler Building, New York. Another collection titled, O Minus, inspired by the famous American Architect Louis Kahn’s work, reflects a robust look and feel. Its circular shape resembles the Parliament of Dhaka. Priced from ₹3,800 to ₹6,500 (Art Deco), and ₹4,000 (O Minus) at greytone.in.
The Gurugram-based designer had earlier thought of extending her design to additional accessory categories like earrings and rings but, admits that those plans have been postponed for a while as “the weight of the jewellery and its susceptibility to cracking are major concerns”.
Aditi has exploited the material perfectly for her handcrafted jewellery. Taking home an accessory award from Elle magazine for #RElanELLEGraduates19 along with many article features, this minimalist revolution has given a meaningful aesthetic to the global business sense.
Your Creep in Shining Armour
A Gossip-girl-gone-wrong series
Is it love or just plain obsession? The line is not as blurry as we think it might be. Netflix’s creepy yet bingeable show, YOU will clear that doubt. Based on a novel by Caroline Kepnes by the same name, YOU’s 10 episode series is a story of a guy with serious psychopathic and obsessive issues. A storyline revolving around a handsome Joe Golberg, played by our favourite lonely boy Penn Badgley, who meets Guinevere Beck by chance, in the bookstore he works at, before he ends up “falling” for her. Seems like your average romantic movie/series, right? but that’s where you’re wrong.
Viewed from Joe’s perspective, it’s actually a story of an absolute-psychopathic, murderous, emotionally abusive stalker with aa rough past, who will stop at nothing to become Beck’s “one and only”. He might seem like your typical boy-next-door due to his good taste in literature, a firm believer in “everything-ship”, despising the posturing upper class socialites, and giving off the “good guy” vibe, but his sinister activities might tell you otherwise. Going to extends like stealing her phone, her passwords, peeking through the giant uncovered windows of her apartment (which she never somehow pays for), following her and even kidnapping and murdering her friends. Love makes you do crazy things, right? After all, it’s blind, duh.
Is the show any good? Not really but once you start, you can’t stop until its over and then you crave for more. So yeah, it’s “addictive”. It’s fortunate for YOU, and for you, that a platform like Netflix exists where you can binge-watch shows like it’s the end of the world. Narrating the show from the abuser’s perspective is actually clever, as it lets you in on Joe’s bi-polar mind. From him rationalising his awful behaviour with inner monologues to him being a good guy and helping out people. Horror really takes it up a notch when it makes you think like Joe and even sympathise with him to the point where you don’t think that he’s a “monster” after all.
As the internet calls it, the series is basically “Dan Humphrey gone Sour”, the same old Serena Van Der Woodsen stalker but with a pick axe instead of an anonymous blog. Due to the reason that Joe is familiar to us, the show has received an insane amount of positive reactions to the point where viewers are defending him and romanticising about him. The discussions online about the show are mainly focused on tearing down the female characters in order to defend Joe. Badgley himself had to take over and set the record straight for viewers who might be so distracted by his chiseled good looks that they ignored the fact that he’s a creep. Can’t blame them now, can we?, after all these rom-coms have led us to think and idolise the male character who is trying so hard to convince “the girl of his dreams” that he’s “the one” for her. This has put us in a position where we are not able to separate the “old-fashion way” of romance and chivalry from the actuality of stalking, emotional abuse and gaslighting.
YOU is definitely entertaining and a work of fiction but also the sad reality of women being harassed and murdered by their stalkers, partners or past lovers. Serious issues like stalking, emotional blackmail and gaslighting are consistently being dismissed or glamorised as romantic, which is why victims are being blamed for their abuser’s psychopathic behaviour. No wonder people online have reacted the way they did but we, as viewers, need to draw a line between entertainment and abuse culture.
Though, YOU is the perfect guilt watch, but make sure your are self-aware and all your doors and windows are locked.
The Only Nudes The World Needs
Miles to go before diversity hits the makeup industry?
It’s 2019, an era where the topic ‘diversification’ is buzzing, yet there are many makeup brands that are still selling three basic foundation shades - light, medium and dark. Somebody seriously needs to check their diversity department. Some appear to have more shades in their range, but when you see their swatches, it’s just 50 shades of beige. The absence of suitable foundation shades has been a serious issue for ethnic minorities with darker hues for a long time. God bless brands like Estée Lauder and Lancôme that are offering more than 42 different hues to match every skin tone that exists. Let’s not forget about Rihanna who showed the world how important inclusivity in foundation shade range is when she launched Fenty Beauty’s Pro Filt'r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation along with busting the myth that deep shades won’t sell well and so did beauty influencer Huda Kattan with her brand Huda Beauty with the #FauxFilter Foundation.
Luxury fashion brands that have tried their luck in the makeup industry, like Givenchy have been called out and criticised for having limited shade range despite offering 20 different shades, *cough* with only 2 darker colours *cough*. Clearly, women of colour don’t make up a good market and are far from niche. These brands have received negative backlash to the point that even beauty influencers like Jeffree Star, don’t review their line. We’re all aware that beauty has been quicker to react the matters of inclusivity than Fashion, but somehow too slow to “really” act upon on it.
Now the question is, are all these brands with diverse shade range really affordable? Not really. Someone who wears makeup on a daily basis, spending about 4K on one bottle of foundation almost every month, seems ridiculous. As they say, you can’t have it all. Either have a mismatched foundation shade at an affordable rate or spend a fortune on the perfect shade. Somehow, lower-end high street brands have an unrelenting obsession with beige, offering only 12 different variations of the colour beige.
Though, there has been a notable improvement by brands like L’Oréal’s True Match Foundation which now offers 28 shades and Maybelline’s Fit me Matte & Poreless Foundation that comes with 19 shades and fortunately they are very much affordable. But for a skin like ours and not having that exposure, we have to settle for less and mix shades to find a suitable match.
To know more about what people really think when it comes to diversification in terms of makeup, we conducted a survey. Around 66 females, mainly, participated out of which the highest age range was from 16-25, most of which were college students.
As a part of the survey, the subjects were asked questions about how often do they use makeup, to which about 42.6% responded Occasionally, 33.8% use makeup sometimes and about 13.2% use it on a day-to-day basis. The most preferred makeup/foundation brands being Lakmé and Maybelline, about 51.5% females are not able to find their exact foundation shade. The most important question in our survey was, do they think there should be diversity in the foundation range? To which 64.7% responded with a Yes.
From this study, we concluded that the issue of diversity in the makeup industry still persists despite the recent efforts from many cosmetic brands.
Marriage: A Heaven on Earth
But are the couples really made in Heaven?
Is every wedding as smooth as it appears to be? without any family drama, runaways or practicing dowry culture? seems very “film-y” when you think of it. Well, don’t we all want an insight of what really goes on behind-the-scenes?. Thanks to Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti’s Made in Heaven, for not only tackling hypocritical Indian social mores but for also exploring themes like ambition, homosexuality and infidelity. A show worth bing-watching with the perfect casting is what Indian TV really needed.
An Amazon Prime Original, the series has raised moral and ideological debates that need to be addressed by our society: class division, privacy, dowry culture, LGBTQ rights and the unbalanced relationship between family and religious superstitions, just by using one of the biggest events in people’s lives, weddings. It is a 9-episode show that tells the audience that the relationships and emotions are more important than the pretentious and superficial attributes of a wedding. The show somewhere also touches the topic of feminism and tries to depict it through its visuals here and there.
The show revolves around the lives of the protagonists, Tara (Sobhita Dhulipala) and Karan (Arjun Mathur) who co-founded a wedding planning agency, the show deals with a new wedding and a new set of family drama per episode. From in-laws wanting a background check on their soon to be daughter-in-law to a bride’s father who bans orange flowers as it’s the color of the opposition party. It unveils, perhaps, the unseen and unheard politics of planning weddings. The team goes beyond their duties even if their personal lives are hanging onto a thread. This is probably because of what they individually face outside the doors of Made in Heaven and are painfully aware of the irony that exists in their business of “designing” happiness.
What might completely throw the viewer off, of course in a positive way, is the little moral commentary offered by another character Kabir – the wedding videographer. He might seem like your average Indian, ‘let’s just shoot people while they’re eating’, type of videographer but he is far beyond that. Narrating at the end of every story, especially the pilot, sums up the point of the whole series. Questioning the “meant to be perfect and beautiful” Big Fat Indian Weddings by shedding light on everything that it is not.
The juxtapositions in every story that the show covers, every struggle the character goes through, feels more real. When throwing light on the individual problems of the protagonists, we get to know how upside down their world is. Tara, who is still adjusting to her wealth, is troubled again and again by her husband’s extramarital affair. Adil, who may appear arrogant, is actually just a closet romantic who is unable to do the right thing. Though, humanising his affair isn’t right as that is still his conscious decision, his character is not all bad.
Karan being a closeted gay man who is drowning in debt and personal conflicts about his sexual identity, has broken the stereotypical gay men standard that the Indian filmmakers have created. His journey is portrayed beautifully as a homosexual man who went from being a teen in denial to becoming a voice for the LGBTQ community and not perceiving his sexuality as a burden. Fighting his family and the state legislation of gay rights, can be a very heart-wrenching moment for the viewers. It is awful to see him getting treated like that, especially when we live in a time where we believe in ‘Love is Love’.
Like they say, “all that glitters is not gold”, we should better start focusing on the real problems in the society rather than wasting time and energy on Big Fat weddings.
Unveiling Uttrakhand
A mission to revive Uttarakhand’s cultural tradition, arts and cuisine
‘Bhuli’, meaning ‘Little sister’ in Garhwali and Kumaoni dialect of Uttarakhand, is a brand that keeps bringing something new to the table. Founded in 2016, by family friends Tanya Kotnala and Tanya Singh, who first collaborated for the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Development, Uttarakhand on the breastfeeding awareness project.
Kotnala being an illustrator and working for the Ministry of Textiles as both a fashion designer and Artisan trainer whereas Singh on the other hand was working for the State Government as a freelance Nutritionist.
Started out as an Art blog to document Uttarakhand’s art and crafts culture, it later became a platform for design and nutrition for social change. From simple sketchbook entries to working on project bases, they took it to another level and started designing, researching and executing projects. Their ‘Costume culture of India’ calendar 2017 gained attention online and was the first series to be converted into products.
Bhuli aims to revive and interpret the spirit of India’s cottage industry through their art and design. Raising awareness through their art amidst women from rural communities upon social issues like menstrual hygiene and maternal health. It celebrates various local arts and crafts culture of several Indian communities, along with delivering “simplicity and sustainability”, their vision is to create a strong and impactful cultural presence (in terms of art, craft and food) globally.
For Tanya Kotnala, Art has always been her first love. As a child, she used to find herself deeply observing things around her, their formation and utility. She recalls drawing on the leftover spaces on the letters her mother wrote to her grandparents. Her interest in sketching made her maintain a travel sketchbook.
As a teen, fashion fascinated her, which led to graduating from NIFT, Meghalaya. She recalls about her time in the Northeast, saying that she was “fortunate enough to get a number of opportunities to work with the locals crafts and craftspeople across the seven sisters”.
Doing craft projects after graduation led to maintaining drawing journals about the local cultures and their traditional attires.
The name ‘Bhuli’ came into being, when Tanya was visiting her maternal village ‘Kaudiya’ in Raja Ji National Park, where she noticed two little girls helping their mother with the harvest. Humming to a sweet local folk jingle and curious for a highly tedious talk. This inspired her to use it as a stage name to for her artworks. Wanting to represent an aura of youth, feminity and curiosity, it helps them stand out and reach a wider audience (both rural ad urban) within the state.
She describes her approach to design as “extremely realistic” as it’s the “purpose and function” that’s more important than “the aesthetics”. Her influences being the diverse Indian arts and crafts culture besides various Indian art styles she is aware of. She enjoys her work being called ‘Tim Burton meets Madhubani’ and recalls meeting with Raheem Gutti, a National Award winning Artisan, who changed her approach to art. According to her, “he had dedicated all his life work towards preserving the art of Bhairavgarh block print”, this meeting impacted her and directed her towards finding a purpose to dedicate her skills.
Tanya’s work process starts with collecting usual things related to the project along with some brainstorming session about the possible combination of two usual things to create something unusual. Later comes the art direction, involving mood, style and colour boards. She says, “the execution of both offline and online projects require a road map”. According to her, the marketing and defined timeline for the distribution of the project if ‘the key’ to reach a wider audience. Dehradun-based Tanya, describes her workplace a mix of indoor and out-of-door endeavours, “a delightful mishmash of light and spaces”.
The biggest challenges she faces as an artist, are her own mental blocks and defining her personal style. Not being able to design due to projects or being too occupied, for her, time management is the key.
Currently, Bhuli Art is in the process of making the Anganwadi centres of Uttarakhand, attractive for kids to make learning fun. Every month they visit one of the districts and paint the centre.
