RASA: Voice of India in Fashion

” RASA: Voice of India in Fashion ” is one among the finalist projects in the international “Normal is Extraordinary” contest that bears the signature of Sonam Gupta, a student at NABA.

For centuries, India has been admired for the craftsmanship of its textiles, embroidery and handmade techniques, but rarely recognized as a source of creative innovation. Global fashion has celebrated Indian hands while forgetting the minds that guide them.

The RASA project was created precisely to upend this narrative: an editorial magazine, built through satire, speculative design, and artificial intelligence, that imagines an alternate reality in which India is the epicenter of global fashion, capable of dictating tastes, trends, and aesthetic languages.

The magazine questions the Western gaze that reduces Indian fashion to folklore or “ethnicity” until it is reinterpreted by a European designer and declared avant-garde. It denounces the selective appreciation of the global industry, which exalts Indian embroideries or fabrics only when they are removed from their cultural origins.

For Sonam Gupta, being an Indian creative means claiming aesthetic and narrative autonomy: asserting that a well-draped sari is as luxurious as a sculptural dress.

“Because fashion is not universal until it speaks fluent Indian.”

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