FEELS LIKE HOME

By Agranee Singh

The other day, life handed me one of those “right place, right time” moments, an invite to the launch of Rain Dogs by Rohit Chawla. Cool concept, major vibes. Somewhere between polite claps and camera flashes, there was this quick little conversation. Casual. Forgettable, until it wasn’t. “Don’t take fashion seriously,” he said, almost offhandedly. And just like that, a world-famous photographer, the same man who’s had Naomi Campbell in front of his lens, tossed that line like a paper plane right at a fashion student. It stung. It burned. It tasted like irony to me.

I smiled and later asked why. But deep down, I knew I was going to forget the answer before he even finished speaking. Because no, I wasn’t going to let someone else’s casual dismissal, rewrite the blueprint I was building for myself. Fashion is serious to me. It’s how I exist out loud. It’s my emotional GPS. You can literally read my mood, my dreams, my grief, my triumph, just by looking at what I’m wearing.

It was my mother who first handed me that magic. While everyone else showed up in cookie-cutter outfits, I rolled up to school looking like someone’s muse, all because she dressed me like I was art. Even now, years later, after six years of silence between us, I still dive into her closet. Those pieces? They aren’t just clothes. They’re time machines stitched with love, memories, and heartbreak. They remind me where I come from, and who I refuse to become.

Growing up alone taught me to armor myself in fabrics and metals. To turn silk into safety nets and jewelry into shields. Sometimes what I wear terrifies me, forces me to reckon with the version of myself I’m still learning to love. Sometimes it wraps me up when nothing else can. But always, always, it saves me. Fashion was never just an aesthetic. It’s survival. It’s defiance. It’s the loudest scream, in a world that keeps telling me to stay quiet. And I’ll never apologize for taking it seriously.

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