Rkive and the art of repair

In the past week of December, Perry Cross Road successful Mumbai’s Bandra suburb, which has hosted streetwear favourites specified arsenic Jaywalking, Mainstreet Marketplace and Bhavya Ramesh, volition besides go location to New Delhi-based circular fashion label Rkive City’s adjacent experiment: a 400 sq.ft. repair shop.

It is simply a chaotic measurement for a young brand, but not for Ritwik Khanna. All of 26, energetic, carrying the benignant of undaunted, reckless optimism that powers start-ups and precocious nighttime sewing rooms, Khanna says, “It whitethorn not marque consciousness financially to repair different people’s clothes, but it’s not a selling enactment either.” He is calling it an interaction play. A benignant of designer-led CSR wherever alternatively of discarding their beloved oregon not-so-beloved clothes, radical tin reimagine what they were acceptable to bin. “We privation to gamify the conception of repairing, wherever you tin get your frayed pieces patched oregon fixed, with a chill modern play connected it.”

Love maine again

Repairing or rafugari is not caller successful Indian parlance. Patchwork, quilting, kantha, darning, adjacent Japanese boro that conscious labels such as Studio Medium and Padmaja propagate travel the aforesaid zero-waste instinct, wherever torn oregon roughed up pieces gain 2nd lives with much quality than the first.

But what does a decorator repair store charge? Khanna laughs astatine the question and past answers it seriously: “We are not going to beryllium functionally the biggest repair store successful the country. That is inactive idiosyncratic similar the tailor uncle who sits adjacent to Galleries Lafayette [in Kala Ghoda] and is susceptible of repairing anything. But it volition bespeak a decorator intervention.” And with that, a higher terms point. Not for mending, but for recontextualising.

Khanna is alert that successful India repair has ever been tied to lack. “Someone who worked astatine OLX explained to maine that the mode Indians request to beryllium marketed second lives is not with the shame of buying pre-owned but by encouraging selling.” This tiny penetration sits alongside the mountains of post-consumer textiles helium has accumulated. Together, they signifier the beginnings of a caller system. “Circular Design Challenge astatine Lakme Fashion Week [India’s biggest award for circular fashion, which he won past year] gave maine a platform, but I bash judge we volition spot de-institutionalisation of brands moving distant from manner week formats,” he says.

For a young decorator to amusement assurance extracurricular the strategy reveals wherever their minds are now. It mirrors a generational shift, too. While Millennial designers erstwhile chased planetary runways and couture conquests, the younger batch truly does privation to prevention the world, but not by stopping radical from buying clothes. Instead they privation to physique parallel worlds, ones that marque apparel past longer, and loop back.

Khanna, who comes from a household of covering exporters, faced absorption erstwhile helium refused to articulation the business. “I told them I would enactment successful the covering marketplace but successful my ain way.” He present works with his 21-year-old member Aarav, collecting discarded covering bits and seeing them successful a wholly antithetic light. “As intolerable arsenic it whitethorn look I’ve enactment definite codes successful spot for however we privation to put the discarded bits, colours, materials.” Rkive, the marque they co-own, often posts images of their mountainous collections of degenerated clothing, pieces they aboriginal propulsion isolated and rebuild done cuts, patterns, repairs.

Old uniforms and reddish socks at Mayo

Khanna carried this aforesaid restless vigor into the nighttime of his archetypal solo show recently at his aged stomping grounds successful Mayo College Ajmer. His formed included erstwhile teachers, young models, existent students and hotelier Abhimanyu Alsisar.

The assemblage was an arsenic eclectic rotation call. Young Jaipur prince and princess Pacho and Gauravi Kumari (Khanna’s friends and batchmates), alumni and friends such as artist Paresh Maity, designers Amrit and Gursy of Lovebirds, Ruchika Sachdeva of Bodice, photographers Bharat Sikka (whose workplace is adjacent to Khanna’s successful Delhi), Prarthna Singh and Rid Burman, jewellers Samarth Kasliwal of Gem Palace, and Digvijay Shekawat of Sunita Shekhawat each watched from the sidelines.

The amusement marked a milestone astatine his alma mater. Mayo College, successful its 150th year, had celebrated with polo matches, concerts and a gathering of aged and caller students. Khanna’s show slipped neatly into the mood, past twisted it. He pulled from the college’s history and Rajasthan’s ocular codes, tugging the acquainted somewhat off-centre. Uniforms were taken isolated and rebuilt into cropped breeches, collarless bandhgalas, trench coats, deconstructed denims, corduroy jackets, pockets printed upside down and the assemblage favourites, panchranga pieces 5 coloured, bold striped seperates, made from the school’s 5 coloured structure cloth.

Discarded linens, aged uniforms, and decades-old curtains resurfaced arsenic medals, coins, rings, safas and ties recast into buttons and badges. Made wholly from what the field had softly stored for years, it gave a caller meaning to kids singing “we don’t request nary thought control.” And ever the rebel, Khanna insisted connected reddish socks connected the models. A colour that, according to schoolhouse lore, annoyed teachers and wardens, but boys wore anyhow to pull the attraction of girls.

Back successful Mumbai, I person 1 past question: “how bash you mend a relationship?” Quietly helium replies, “Space first, past beryllium the archetypal to apologise.” Khanna’s optimism proves torn apparel tin person a caller lease astatine life, and with a small patience, possibly relationships, too.

The writer is simply a Mumbai-based manner stylist.