Convergence of Fashion, Culture, and Art
Nikita Shah (b. Mumbai, India) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator and independent researcher exploring the convergence of fashion, craft, and healing. She spent over a decade developing practices in weaving, embroidery, prints, paints and craft with over thirteen textile clusters across India before she migrated to NYC.
She began her journey as an undergrad at NIFT, India where she designed two collections with weavers in Madhya Pradesh which won her two awards for the innovative use of indigenous yarns, revival of 100-year-old block-designs and contemporizing a less popular textile.
Through her journey she came across the 3000-year-old temple textile of Kalamkari, which spoke to her soul and is her medium of artistic and fashion expression. The only Kalamkari practitioner in the US, Nikita interprets the root of this traditional textile and uses it as an activist tool to narrates stories of gender identity, mental health, geopolitics, and home.
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Birth of a Brand: Untitle by Nikita
A textile expert with a vision to tell the story of Kalamkari and honor its heritage through her work, in 2021 Nikita developed her slow fashion brand untitle as her love letter to humanity and the Earth. Through untitle, she supports the human connection and amplifies the lives, stories, and deeper meaning that clothing can express. Her eco-conscious commitment is unwavering, by upcycling memorial clothing and dead stock textiles sourced from artisans in India and giving them a new lease on life in the world of fashion.
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Craft as Art
A freehand drawn and painted textile art, Kalamkari has its roots in visual storytelling and documentation. Nikita employs this technique as both a form of personal expression and a means of preserving communal stories. Through her convergence of visual art and craft process, she advocates for the recognition of craft as a legitimate and valuable form of art.
Crafting Communities: Fursat
In addition to incorporating Kalamkari in her work, Nikita teaches South Asian Textiles and dress through her workshops “fursat” [a South Asian term embodying leisure, reflection, and wisdom] where she introduces the knowledge, techniques and the complex wisdoms of textile techniques.
She has collaborated with New York Public Library, New York Textile Month, Asia Society, Brooklyn LGBT Community Centre, South Asian New York Fashion Week, Bloomberg, Shopify, the Agaati Foundation, Pike Place Market, the Indian Institute of Technology for fursat.
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Academia
Nikita integrates her practice at fursat, indigenous knowledge systems and oral traditions into academic teaching.
She has developed syllabi on South Asian textiles and dressmaking, Kalamkari history and making as a teaching artist at institutions such as Tufts, Amherst, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Indian Institute of Technology.
Her Skills, Expertise, and Early Beginnings
Nikita ran operations as the head designer for an influential brand known for its dedication to preserving traditional Indian textiles in India. She then turned consultant for NEST Expert Network, an agency developed to advance the creative artisan economy.
Nikita’s profound love for textiles began as a little girl, watching her mother make clothing choices, exciting her visual palette with an explosion of color, fabrics, and textures that captivated her and later drew her into the world of artisanal textiles.
She went on to earn a degree in textile design at the pioneering National Institute of Fashion Technology in India. She delved further into the world of textile crafts by living amongst artisans and weavers across over ten textile clusters at the grassroots of India. She continued to push her creative boundaries and hone her craft by majoring in fashion design at one of the top fashion schools in the U.S., the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.