Amalgamating traditional Mizo with contemporary textiles
Patricia Zadeng is a Textile Designer and an entrepreneur currently located in Mizoram. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Textile Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She has worked on training weavers under the Mizoram government shortly after her graduation. She has her own clothing brand called Lapar.
Growing up she witnessed a lot of weaving happening at her place. Inspired from the traditional textiles, she wanted to create something that had fuelled her interest in Textile Design. She has interned under Rahul Mishra and her graduation project was under Maku Textiles Pvt. Ltd in Kolkata. Her memorable project at National Institute of Design was about Fabric Construction where she worked on the theme of iridescence and experimented with various fabrics to make the fabric look colourful with different colours. Her graduation project was about creating a collection of sarees for a brand called Maku Textiles Pvt. Ltd in Kolkata.
Through the foundation of Lapar in 2017, Patricia has made an amalgamation of traditional Mizo and contemporary textiles. Lapar’s puans are woven with an extra weft weaving technique and the motifs are woven on the loom. Materials like cotton, eri silk as well as modal yarn are used to weave textiles at Lapar. Apart from conventional patterns of stripes and checks, modern geometric motifs are also utilised. Patricia has revived many traditional Mizo motifs by including them in her textiles which are no longer commonly found in puans sold in the market. The utilisation of the forgotten motifs have made these textiles appealing to the youth as well as other age groups.
As a designer, Patricia envisions to provide an exposure to Mizo textiles outside the state where craftsmen can showcase their products and earn a livelihood. She wishes to document various types of bamboo in the region, basket making as most of it is languishing.