Indian fashion designers foraying into home decor, be it Sabyasachi or Ritu Kumar, is not new. But now the furniture and home accessories brand Freedom Tree - known for its vibrant upholstered fabrics and furniture - has launched a womenswear line, dresses, co-ords, and tops.
Latika Khosla, founder, and design director says she decided to work on a line for women about a year ago, and onboarded Rashi Jain, who has just graduated from Gujarat’s Unitedworld Institute Of Design (UID), to lead the project. “We wanted to translate our bold signature colours and prints onto wearable breathable fabrics and feminine silhouettes. We started with a collage of colours, and tried it on for sizing and fit with our own team of young designers, mothers, and working women,” says Latika, who had launched a menswear line three years ago to test the waters.
Latika explains how the team trialled dozens of fabrics, and tweaked their silhouettes. “We spent countless hours tucking, tying, trimming, and finessing every last detail of this collection. Finally, we experimented with different colours on a range of skin tones, searching for colorways that would suit the whole gamut of Indian complexions,” she says, adding, “We have worked with soft, feathery cotton satin, viscose, and modal, all of which are bio-based, and bio-degradable. We printed in small batches, and used the hand-screen-printing process with hand-mixed colours,” she says of the collection printed and manufactured in Mumbai.
