Living and Working from your Living Room.
Fashion maven, Masaba Gupta has always been a forerunner and vocal about her views in the interest of people. Be it her strong stance on body positivity or her eclectic sense of fashion. During our quarantine catch-up, we share with you Masaba’stalk on fashion, beauty and everything in between.
Here are some noteworthy excerpts.
When we asked her about how she and her company were coping through this, she mentioned that it was a difficult time but it isn’t something that her close-knit team couldn’t handle, “the biggest challenge at this time is to keep the team motivated, and the only way we can do that is by creating together, so we are all still working and still creating to keeping ourselves sane.”
The thing that works in coping with anxiety and uncertainty? “Meditation. Meditation always works for me apart from that journaling and just putting your thoughts down where you can see them always helps you centre yourself,” she says.
We got to talking about her one-of-a-kind eclectic prints and where she gets inspiration from. That’s when we found out about her most popular print, “you know the palm print which was one of my first, it was my palm. My mom (Neena Gupta) would make me draw my hand on a paper and put it in frames around the house to see how much I have grown. One day I was just looking at it and I thought to myself, this would make such a great print. That’s how it happened!”
We had to ask her about her rocking curls and how to take care of them. Here are her tips for having a good hair day.
Tip 1: Understand what kind of curls you have, that’s important to know what will work or not.
Tip 2: Curly hair dries out a lot, so always have ample moisturising ingredients in all your products.
Tip 3: Never brush through your curly hair when it’s dry, especially when you have tight curls.
Tip 4: When your hair is soaking wet in the shower, take a lot (2 palm fulls) of conditioner, douse your hair with it and then comb it out gently.
Tip 5: Use warm olive oil in your hair on a Sunday for a few hours and then wash your hair.
Finally, any parting words for budding designers?
“Be authentic. Get your finances in order or get someone to help out and lastly study but doesn’t rely only on theoretical knowledge, the design is what they DON’T teach you in school.”
In January 2020, Masaba had launched a clothing line ‘I Will Wear Out Plastic’, that features clothes, with detachable bags built within the garment itself. The collection was part of a UNEP India and Ogilvy India campaign that works on phasing out single-use plastic.
“Fashion is a great means of communicating with people… Everything follows and understands fashion because it is not hard work to understand. We thought doing a collection of clothes that turn into bags would be the perfect thing. A lot of people can incorporate it into their daily lives. It’s a fun concept to watch, it’s engaging, and at the same time, it is sustainable. This is how it came out to be. We worked on it for about 1.5 years,” Masaba told IANS.
“This creative collection aims to reduce the use of plastic bags uniquely. Each garment has, as an exclusive accessory, a detachable reusable bag that is a fashion statement by itself. If you are an impulsive shopper, this is your go-to collection to do your bit for the environment, and fashionably too,” Gupta added.
“This is not just a collaboration, it’s a war cry. This is House of Masaba’s way of giving back to the environment. It’s the need of the hour and we are taking that conscious step towards sustainability’’.
The fashion industry is also known to produce the most global wastage. This time, we’re using careful fashion as a tool for sustainence,empowerment and activism,” Masaba shared.
