Adya Rohira
Bio
Adya Rohira’s practice emerges from introspective states, using reflection as a generative process. Drawing from architecture, literature, and theology, her work examines the relationship between the body, awareness, and self-recognition through garments that balance structure with sensitivity.
Her process centers around three-dimensional silhouette development, where form is sculpted, layered, and built directly on the body. This allows garments to respond to the body in motion and behave differently across wearers and contexts. Her textile development is iterative and experimental, enabling materials to evolve organically.
With a background in fashion design and merchandising, Adya interprets fashion as an intimate, tactile language and in a broader retail framework, where identity and modes of consumption continuously inform one another.
Anisha wearing the 'Gaping' Tunic & 'Water' Skirt
Maeve wearing the 'Open' Dress
Virginia wearing the 'Inside' Dress
Third Eye
‘Third Eye’ explores introspection by breaking the dominance of the external gaze, by asking what it means to see yourself seeing. Openings drive the silhouettes: folding, expanding, revealing through cutouts, pleats, and sheer layers. Deep blue monochromes create a sense of expansivity, positioning color as space; making the body both lens, and subject.
Developed through dimensional, experimental draping and minimal-waste pattern-making, each piece is built directly on the body with 4 or less pattern pieces, allowing form to emerge intuitively & sustainably.
Kate wearing the 'Shell Top' and 'Cave Skirt'
Virginia wearing the 'Inside Dress'
The manner in which designs from this collection are engineered to be constructed is inherently sustainable, as most of the patterns are, at their core, large, sculpted blocks of fabric. When the patterns are cut onto fabric, 90% of the fabric block gets used by each piece, leaving the wastage to be very minimal. Additionally, each garment only possesses 4 or fewer pattern pieces, emphasising the importance of sculpture in the construction of this collection. As a byproduct, most garments in the collection tend to have very few seams.
I looked into the idea of light & shadow as an interpretation of the word “openings” both on a physical and metaphysical level. This culminated in an exercise where I cut shapes or made incisions on paper and photographed light passing through it at several different angles. I then used those same cutouts and the shapes that the shadows made in my photograph to cut out blocks of muslin, shaped the same way, and draped it on the body.
(Left to Right) Sample 1 is handpainted on muslin, and the final is handpainted on brushed cotton twill using a combination of 3 textile paint colors. This textile is present in the pants in look 3.
Sample 2 is dyed on polyester organza, and the final is dyed on combed cotton twill using a combination of 3 liquid dye colors. This textile is present in the dress in look 1.
Sample set 3 is heat treated & dyed on polyester organza, and the same polyester organza has been heat treated, dyed and used as the final fabric for the skirt in look 5.
This collection treats color as a space rather than a surface. Influenced by monochromatic work, I use deep blue to evoke immersion, depth, and introspection. Within the collection, it reflects the idea of inward perception, positioning blue as a visual language for the Third Eye and expanded awareness. Initial references drew heavily from Yves Klein’s Monochromes and his interpretation of the “expansivity” characteristic of blue, since it spoke heavily to my understanding of and research into Lord Shiva’s third eye and the connotations of “inner awakenings” associated with it.
Visually, I interpreted openings through looking at light and shadow, structural developments and architecture, which later grew to inform my exploration into pleating.
