Mayan Rajendran comes by way of Canada. A multi-talent, Rajendran has a decade of industry experience under his belt in design, wholesale, and PR. Currently working as a stylist, he is passionate about his Indian heritage, which influences his creative endeavors.
What type of fashion career are you most interested in and why?
I really enjoy bringing together all the products of a collection together as a whole and bringing the artistic/creative direction messaging into a palatable and wearable form. The representation of emotions, memories, and intention is being communicated through the collection as a whole. For these reasons, a design director position is what really piques my interests at this point in time.
What in your view do you add to the fashion industry?
Interdisciplinary skills, diasporic perceptiveness, graphic communications, color and textile forecasting. The skill that I am most proud of is my approach to design-driven problems using a peripheral approach by which the task at hand is approached from a number of angles – looking at the environmental, social, elemental factors. I really enjoy approaching the topics of color and textile forecasting in this manner. Based on everything going on around my target consumer, how can these factors make them “feel something?” I have been successful on a few occasions; now I feel confident with how I move toward these decisions.
How do you define fashion?
Emotional adornment of the body through the medium of textile construction. It is an inter-functioning society built on the collaborative efforts of several talented and skilled parties. From sketch to form, fashion is the information of aesthetic/sociological contexts; referencing historical precedent or contemporary cultural influences and translated into surfaces/seams of beauty.
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