NEBRAYAN – CURATOR – JDADA2019

 “Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street. Fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”

—— Coco Chanel ——

Designers Hemavathi R and Sudharshini Isaac’s collection, “Nebrayan” draws its inspiration from the Nebra Sky Disc (found in Germany) and its similarities with the method used by the Mayans to build the pyramid of “El Castillo” in Chichen Itza.

During the course of their research, the designers learnt about the Bronze age artefact – Nebra Sky Disc, an ancient star map, the oldest known depiction of the cosmos. A prominent feature of the Nebra Sky Disc, are the Pleiades – the 7 sisters, or the 7 stars. The Pleiades was also important to the Mayan civilization and were known to build their pyramids aligned with the Pleiades. Hence, the inspiration for the collection was drawn from “El-Castillo”, a pyramid at the Chichen Itza, in the Mexican state of Yucatán. The pyramid is dedicated to the flying “Feathered Serpent” known as ‘Kukulkan’ the King and it also relates to the planet Venus.

The designers featured elements of both of these historical artifacts in their collection. Drawing from the pyramids, they used wooden buttons for the main motifs of the King, and Feathered Serpents. The other motifs in their collection are, hieroglyphs, flowers, birds, animals from the tropical forest with colours of nature, eagle and jaguar warriors of Mayans and some of the strokes from their existing traditional garments. The wooden buttons have been hand painted using non-metallic paint. The colour blue and gold forms the base colours of the garments depicting the Nebra Sky Disc