A Saturday with Fashion Lovers

Hey everyone,

A quick update from us on our Bangalore Fashionistas meetup event No.4: A rendezvous with a Fashion Expert, showcasing Ramya Mohan, a young Textile Designer.

To those of you who are hearing "Bangalore Fashionistas Meetup Group" for the first time, a quick explanation: It is an extension of our effort to build a community of fashion lovers,besides this blog we have a Facebook page, Twitter account, a LinkedIn group , and of course the meetup group too.
This is so you digital denizens can follow and interact with us on multiple platforms, each platform of course has different uses. Meetup, is perhaps a slightly lesser known platform, but it is gaining in popularity, it allows you to create and manage live (physical) events for an online community in your city.

We started the group in Bangalore, to bring to fashion lovers, a range of small curated fashion-related events, and frankly we were going crazy trying to figure out what sorts of events people would like and respond to...because you see we aren't Lakme or Wills to organize full-fledged fashion shows!!

We figured, true fashion lovers would be interested in getting to know more on all aspects of fashion:

• What we see: The glamour, the shows, the shoots,the shops, the clothes (And shoes), the style and the adrenaline...
• What goes on behind the scenes: The Designers' efforts, the retail scene, the creative process, the effort in styling & organizing photo-shoots and so on...
• Capitalizing on the huge + effect of the web on Fashion: The Bloggers, the Digerati and understanding the whole world of Fashion Related stuff on the web...

So this time we decided to take things up a notch and start having serious discussion sessions on fashion rather that get into the same-old-same-old rut of playing dress-up, networking and clicking pictures.
Not to say that we don't enjoy that, but it was time to try something new!

To this end, Bangalore Fashionistas collaborated with JD Institute of Fashion Technology, a Premier Fashion College in India with branches in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore (and expanding rapidly into many more smaller cities as well) who was the Sponsor of the Event, and they provided the venue and also helped us sign on the expert speaker for the event: Ramya Mohan , an NID Graduate and a successful Independent Textile Designer.

And it seems that Bangalore has responded well to our efforts and this event format!
We got a better than usual turn-out rate and the little class-room was packed full with eager fashion business owners, fashion designers and fashion lovers who loved the session, we had a fashion quiz and a T-shirt graphic design competition to top it all off.

Ramya discussed her journey as a Textile Designer and her process of translating Inspiration to tangible Designs and Products, a process that has to be both creatively satisfying, as well as commercially viable for her clients. She turned out to be a riveting presenter and the audience related to her really well.

Check out some slides from her presentation below and a small video that capture a part of her presentation:

Meetup ramya presentation from mailforveena

Next we are planning a meetup on one of the themes below:

• Fashion blogger panel discussion: finding your niche
• A Fashion entrepreneur's journey: what it takes to set up a fashion business
• Styling & fashion shoots: the hands-on approach

Do let us know if you have any ideas or suggestions or if you would like to be a speaker (or know of anyone who might be interested in being one) at any of these meetups!

To keep an eye out for the next meetup in Bangalore, do join our group.

Lots of Love, & stay tuned!