Uncut interview with the textile designer- Malvika Kaushik

Malvika is an explorer with an intent to create products for a cause, look for people and their stories, experience cultures and emerge together as a community.

At Casa Amarosa, we love collaborating with Indian designers who have an inherent understanding of Indian artisanal techniques with an ability to channel their Indian roots into a cultural dialogue with the world. Our new collection designed by Malvika does exactly that. At its core it is a collection with a focus on sustainability, craft and upliftment - crafted in collaboration with weavers and artisans with skills-honed across generations

 My creative process includes observation and Intuition

The design process involves observation and letting everything that you see around, seep inside of you. Because once it seeps inside of you, it automatically creates the aesthetics, the elements, the colors for you. The idea is to give yourself enough space to observe what surrounds you. 

Getting into the flow of creating.

The moment you let yourself lose.

That nervousness you go through before beginning something new.

When you surpass that moment and enter a state of flow where ideas keep coming in and you’re just excited to put them all together. That’s my favorite bit. 

There are a lot of creators who are breaking the norms, doing the unexpected and have been a guidance throughout. 

Apart from that, I’m a person who likes to combine two polar opposites and see what comes out of it. That is exactly what you will get to see in the next collection that comes with simplicity as well as sophistication. 

For me, I think Instagram is one big platform to understand human psychology. What everyone is being drawn towards? The kind of colors, patterns and moods they prefer. And all of this again, is a part of observation. 

My experience designing for Casa Amarosa has been very effortless and quite organic to be honest. There is this sense of freedom and trust which allows me as a designer to put in my heart and soul in the project. 

We have a few mini collections coming up and the first part of this collection is Geometric Medley. The technique that we’re working with is block printing and the idea was to have fun with shapes and colors. It’s a medley of geometry infused with fun bright colors entering the new year with a lot of quirk and fun. 

The first collection which is geometric medley is a collection made using a technique called block printing. In this technique, artisans (typically from the western region of India) carve wooden blocks by hand depending on the design that’s provided to them. Once that’s complete, they press these blocks onto the fabric which is 100% cotton. 

In this entire process of hand printing, there is a lot of love, knowledge and transmission of culture from another part of the world altogether. Using these traditional handcrafting techniques we as a team strive to bring these unique products to life. 

Last thought?! I don’t think I want to have any last thought because I want this to end without a full stop. So that we keep creating geometric medley 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and this ends up to be a never-ending design process.