Always curious about fashion Shreya grew up reading her mom’s fashion magazines but she recalls the beginning of her fashion journey “But the day I actually fell in love with fashion was when I came across a Marc Jacobs interview in 8th grade, even though I remember not understanding much, it was something that I knew I wanted to know more about.”
Shreya, the founder of FFTY and a student at NIFT Kangra has found contentment with her accessory design course though she had plans for fashion communication. Being a major fashion geek she is always reading, researching, and studying fashion.
FFTY started as a college away from college: a magazine aiming to provide a platform to the students in creative fields. The circumstances changed because of the pandemic and now it’s a promising online magazine that focuses on educating the youth about fashion today, with constant touches of the past. “In the beginning, FFTY was all about fashion, movies, and music but since I transformed FFTY intending to focus on high fashion exclusively, the magazine highlights fashion news, reviews, archives, brand history, and more”.
“I believe that the understanding of fashion nowadays is shallow, more focused on the ‘I like clothes’ more than the ‘I like fashion” Shreya talks about the rather naive perceptions of fashion. “Fashion is a form of individualism and expression, and it speaks louder than words do. It’s everywhere we go, and definitely more than just dressing up. Fashion has the power of breaking the stereotypes that land our way” Through FFTY Shreya hopes to educate people on what fashion is really all about. Even with no intention to commercialize FFTY Shreya does have some exciting plans and a YouTube channel is on its way aka my future obsession.
Her views on big Fashion publications are rightly unimpressed, she comments “In one sentence ‘Addison Rae’s 7 outfits in a week by Vogue’. I mean I can only imagine what all research fashion journalists working at such reputed magazines have to do”. Influencer’s street style or a tik-tok star’s eating habits isn’t something we expect out of Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, etc; with the resources and power they hold it is quite disappointing to see they continue to provide uninspired money-hungry content. She continues “I’m not disregarding all that they write, but that sort of content is overpowering the rest, rarely would I see an article that is actually educational and interesting”
Though Shreya is optimistic and has found comfort in the fashion communities be it on Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. She talks about her experience on Twitter “HF Twitter is a great community of people interested in different fields of fashion, sharing their knowledge on the internet. These people on the internet are the true journalists of fashion, I just wish we focus on them instead.” With a decentralized fashion community, the interest in fashion is building up and it more than ‘red carpet moments’ and ‘what fashion editors are wearing this spring’.
People here think beyond and talk about things that matter; analyzing archives, the history of clothes, discussing different ideologies while also calling out nepotism and problematic brands/designers. Diversity and inclusivity take a front seat here and give us a glimpse of a promising future of Fashion Journalism. We are progressing, even though slowly, toward a better and more freeing world.
Shreya S in a conversation with Shreya Kapil the founder of FFTY- Fashion for the Youth
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