Six Six Sick: Rorschach Mania

My favorite dress from the collection, featuring a Rorschach inspired digital print.

This past Friday, I was invited to stop by the Sachin + Babi Resort lookbook shoot, to get a glimpse of the new collection, and take some backstage photos of the pieces up close. Husband and wife design team Sachin Ahluwalia and Babi Ahluwalia have a long and storied history in the textile design industry. Both Sachin and Babi grew up in families involved with the textile industry in their home country of India, and then ended up meeting while studying Textile Design at F.I.T. They first started their textile company, ANK, in 1996, providing fabrics to legendary fashion houses like Oscar De La Renta, YSL, and Derek Lam, before launching their luxury home line, ANKASA in 2004. In 2008, the couple launched their ready-to-wear line, and the clothes heavily feature their background in textiles. Each garment is made from their custom prints and fabrics, and often feature three or four contrasting fabrics mixed together.

This season, Sachin + Babi drew inspiration from Rorschach test ink splatters, starting with a distorted digital print of the original ink splatters rendered in a rainbow burst, which was meant to have the appearance of a modernized Ikat print. They also laser-cut the ink-splatter silhouette into the fabric, and created leather ink-splatter cut-outs, which they applied to their bags and accessories. My favorite pieces however were the jewels of course, and I totally fell for the giant collars made out of metal cutout Rorschach splotches.