Be bold with a cause

As the sun beats down this year make sure to grab one of Afsana Ferdousi's comfortably, light, eco-couture kurtis, tops, or panjabis. She uses neutral tones for her colour scheme, making it the best pick to fight against the sweltering heat. When asked about the process behind each of her lines, she said, “Honestly every clothing line that I do is like narrating a story. I did a recent fashion show focusing on the theme of Patachitra, where I narrated the chronological history of khaadi till present day — through a song I had written myself and hand paint and embroidery in my designs.”

For this Pahela Baishakh her designs will focus on folk motifs. Two of her clothing lines, the Jamdani Sweater Collection and the Walk of Happiness were highlighted at a recent fashion show in Mexico. While one focuses on a never before attempted or seen unique western wintery look with Jamdani motifs knitted onto the sweaters itself, the other is done on Rajshahi silk with nakshi kantha designs and promotes social and nature preservation messages like, “Save our stripes.”

Afsana Ferdousi uses locally produced fabrics, promoting traditional and indigenous weavers, who are losing out due to the mass scale production of their industrial, synthetic counterparts.

Each of her outfits come with details in the form of pictures, and social messages such as fighting global warming, saving endangered species, human rights just to name a few a few.

Fusion of any kind can be tricky. It is all about finding the perfect balance that honestly is the real struggle. For Afsana Ferdousi, her self-titled clothing line is nothing short of that, in her own words, she describes it as eco-couture, in other words fashion with a purpose.