Fashion is about more than what you wear; it’s also about empowerment, global connectivity, and storytelling. At least that’s what drives entrepreneur Nidhi Garg’s fashion company, Marasim.

Marasim is a Hindi word for connections, which defines the mission that Nidhi has been pursuing since founding the company in New York City in 2014. The company empowers local artisans in developing countries to share their craft with leading designers around the world.

As part of her transition from electronics and communication engineer to fashion entrepreneur, Nidhi earned a Fashion Design Certificate through Parsons at Open Campus, The New School’s destination for continuing and professional education that draws upon the vast resources of the top-ranked Parsons School of Design.

Nidhi sat down for a Q&A about the mission behind fashion company as well as her experience with Parsons at Open Campus.

Nidhi

Where did the idea for Marasim come from?
It started in 2014. I just moved to the US after getting married, and I saw everyone wearing black clothes on the road. As a young married Indian girl I was so disappointed with so much black. I wanted to bring some color. So I started my own brand called Red Ghagra. With Red Ghagra, I was travelling extensively and making connections at the grassroots. The villages I was traveling to didn't even have proper roads. So I started thinking, what if I organize it and make it available to more designers because these crafts are rooted in thousands of years of culture, history, and expertise, and these shouldn't stay so isolated from the rest of the design world. There Marasim was born.

Where are these artisans? What are the types of things they make and what do you love so much about them?
We started with India because that's my homeland. Because its industry is not very developed, they're still following the original traditions. For example, they're still using all the materials to create fabrics from scratch, like from a fiber they will find. They will use real silk worms, get silks from them, dye them in natural colors with the color available from the root of a tree or a leaf, and then weave them into beautiful fabrics.

How does your work impact these communities?
There are ten million artisans in India. Most of them are women. When we tell these women the story of our design clients, they feel so appreciated about their skills. And they feel amazing that somebody is wearing their handwork. So that's one impact. The other thing is that making and buying a product becomes more soulful when somebody's story is being told. From a cross-cultural exchange point of view, there's a huge impact.

How about in terms of sustainability?
I think it is naturally very sustainable because the kind of people we're working with are based out of grassroots. Their raw materials are already very locally sourced and what they're creating is not mass run machine-produced. Plus it is supporting those communities. So it's sustainable in many ways. And then it’s sustainable again when it comes to the buyer or the designer who's selling the product They're selling it with a story. They're selling it with a lot of meaning and soul to it. So these products live longer than any fast-run, quickly produced product.

Web Version 20180130 Nidhi Garg 001

Can you tell us broadly who your clients are?
We are building partnerships with government agencies and fashion councils in two or three different parts of the world. We are also teaming up with some major fashion designers for their upcoming collections. And we are also helping some established brands for sourcing artisan made finished products

What does a typical day in New York look like?
There's so many different times that I'm working on at the moment so coordinating with my team overseas, or our partners overseas, is a huge part of my day. In New York, I'm always on the go. I’m meeting the clients and showing them our textile library in a small crafts museum that we're trying to set up. I personally start my conversation with a client after talking them through the library and so it's about meeting new people and telling them those stories. There are different clients that are coming up with their design vision who are telling us new challenges everyday, asking our artisans every day. So it's challenging every day, with every client with every project. But it's very rewarding.

What does your work life look like when you're traveling in India?
Ever since I started working with crafts, my relationship with India has changed a lot. I've started to appreciate my motherland more. There is the way the people dress up; they're so happy and content. And it almost feels like a beautiful melody doing colorful things without using ostentatious materials. So that is very inspiring and very grounding to me.

I travel back to India every six to seven months. I have a full-time team there. We have textile experts who have dedicated their whole life to studying craftsmanship. We have amazing designers, the best design talent in the country. And people that are very passionate about working with grassroots. And I go to the grassroots, where there are people sitting in groups, chatting and embroidering, or weaving. I'm also carrying the sorrows and pains of people who are making these products. I think I'm also becoming a part of their story each day. So it's a very rewarding kind of travel back and forth between India and the US.

What was the skillset you felt you were lacking and how did you develop it?
I wanted to understand my clients better. I wanted to understand how they start their design process, how they form their mood boards, how they form their color palettes, how they look at the mood boards to design garments, and then how they technically construct it. I did not just want to play the role of telling stories and selling the fabrics. I wanted to understand how the fabric behaves on the form. So learning these kind of technicalities made me deliver better to my clients and understand their requirements better.

Web Version 20180130 Nidhi Garg 146

What are some of the technical things you learned to do at Parsons?
I did basic construction and advanced construction where our teacher took us directly to the mannequin and made us drape things. She said, I want a jacket and this is the fabric, now how do you do it? And I think the best part about Parsons is the teachers have always encouraged us to be ourselves. Like there is a certain curriculum that they would teach all of us, which are, those are the basic rules. Apart from that they would always leave it on us to create our own version of that particular curriculum by the end of the semester as a project.

What about your experience with the faculty was really impactful?
The Parsons faculty is very cooperative, and they're with you not just in the class but even after the class ends. They helped to connect me with other people at the school if I needed help outside of what they could personally do for me; my professors were also very open to meeting with me for fifteen minutes or thirty minutes before the class to discuss any questions I may have had. I think they always try to understand that I am making a business out of whatever I’m learning here and I need help with some many practical things that I'm doing in my day. So they always supported me with whatever I asked.

What other resources were you were able to take advantage of when it came to peers or networking?
The kind of diversity we have in the class is amazing. There are students from Paris and London and other parts of the world. They sit together around one table, with very different understandings of life, colors, patterns, or anything. So I think that it is a very enriching experience, to learn so much about perspectives.

Apart from that, I think the Parsons library is a very important resource. I started exploring it after my fashion history course. Our teacher asked us to pick one designer from history who we loved. I picked Chanel. So I studied about her life and then wrote about her. From there, I thought, ‘why not explore the online library and offline?’ It’s an amazing library, and all of the resources it offered had me hooked. I found myself sitting there not just for Chanel, but for Jay Van Norton, and various other designers, reading about how they choose their images, what is it that inspires them, how important material or stories are for them. As an entrepreneur, I was able to formulate my idea better after learning about these designers in the library.

Another very important resource that Parsons offers are great events. They are mostly free for students, so Parsons encourages students to attend those events, which would otherwise be super expensive for any outsider to try and get into. Those events give you direct access to the biggest fashion personalities in the world. We had Victoria Beckham visit and talk about her line, very candidly. Also Simon Collins, the former dean of Parsons, and so many other important business personalities, and because you’re a Parsons student they will always take you seriously.

How might you characterize the impact that this new knowledge and these new skills had on you and your business?
I think it has had a very profound impact on me. As an entrepreneur I'm always refining my idea to serve my clients better, to form a better sustainable business model, and I think all of this knowledge and this meeting different people from different backgrounds, and access to the library, has made me more informed about what I'm getting into and the people that I'm serving, which is very important for any company to understand at the beginning itself.

How has your experience at Parsons affected your conversations with your clients?
I acquired a lot of technical knowledge about how a garment is constructed. So now, when I meet a designer I make sure that I visit the store, I study the designer, I study the kind of technically, functionally, and visually the kind of materials that they are looking for and push them something that makes sense to them. And then even in our conversations with the designer they will mention things that when you have studied technically then only could you understand those things. So those make more sense sense to me now, and I am able to understand them better.

Meeting with designers or other government agencies or partnerships and having the opportunity to tell them that I'm from Parsons also leaves a very nice impression. From that point itself they will start taking me seriously. Like, she knows design, she understands, technically she's very well-informed about things

Has attending this program impacted your goals for the business at all? Where do you want to take Marasim next and is that at all affected by what you learned at Parsons?
I think it has made me more ambitious. I can identify more gaps and more problems and how can I, with the kind of contacts and network or the kind of team I have at the grassroots now, how can I solve these problems in a much better way. So I think it is opening me up to more areas of fashion industry. Now it's not just about fashion. It can be any form of design which need handmade raw materials. For example, jewelry, accessories, home, interior, design and craftsmanship has become my vision now instead of just fashion.

If you had to pick one thing that you think is the single most important value or lesson you learned at Parsons, what would it be?
One of the most important things that I learned at Parsons is to be yourself. We're students coming from different backgrounds, learning the same thing, but we do our own thing. And then social justice. Whatever you create, care about the society, and the people and the environment.