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Riya Collective Fashion Runway Show Highlights Boutique South Asian Creative and Designers
The Origins
Riya Collective began a few years ago as a rental start-up and was quickly termed “South Asian Rent the Runway”. However, with the 2020 pandemic hitting retail stores, especially rental markets, they quickly re-established themselves.
Arian and Sarina, the co-founders of Riya Collective are on a much broader mission: to re-invent fashion consumption to be more diverse, sustainable, and equitable.
Both Indian-American women have been best friends for 14 years (since freshman year in college). They went from college roommates to first-job-out-of-college roommates (in NYC) to sharing-a-studio-apartment roommates when they moved to San Francisco together in 2012.
What is Riya Collective?
Evidently, in building the first version of Riya for many years they learned just how broken the current fashion ecosystem is. Despite globalization, a few marquee Western brands dominate fashion. The team behind Riya Collective knows the system doesn’t reward those who actually make and design the garments. That is when they decided, they could do better.
Nonetheless, Riya Collective is a platform that represents boutique creatives and designers all over the world. It makes their clothing accessible to US consumers. They want to do this in a way that questions every aspect of the supply chain so that the buyer’s dollars go directly to the makers and support an ecosystem that is good for the planet.
All in all, what they are doing could really bring some change to the fashion world.
Runway Fashion Show
The runway show took place on September 23rd in the Garment District in New York City. Special performances include Twinjabi and DJ Dr. Srimix.
Moreover, it was a star-packed show with celebrities like Nadia Jagessar from Netflix’s Indian-matching, Bali Chainani from Bravo’s family karma, TikTok Sensations Jikaria Sisters, and hosted by Anisha Ramakrishna.
See their Instagram page for a quick highlight of the eventful night and their heartfelt message below:
“With a packed out house despite the pouring rain, we danced into the night and we celebrated the pride we feel for South Asian fashion. We said and repeated to each other that the time for South Asian fashion is NOW. Each and every person we met was dressed in the most creative South Asian-inspired outfits and it made our hearts soar. Thank you New York for your love and support, we can’t wait until next time ❤️”
The Designers:
To continue forth, here are some of the names that the models wore. Additionally, Riya takes an initiative to sell back outfits for resale. Once again, proving that they are the change the South Asian fashion community needs.
- Shloka Khialani
- Bhumika Sharma
- Sukriti and Aakriti
- SVA
- Saaksha & Kinni
- Bhaavya Bhatnagar
- Vidushi Gupta
- 431-88
- Pratyusha Garimella
- Countrymade
- Diwan Saheb
- Zariin
- Paisely Pop
- Amama
- Anisha Parmar Jewelry
- YLNM (Yeh Lehenga Nahi Mehenga)
- Salt and Spring by Sonam Jain
- Anis Collections (based in the US, manufactures in India)
- Sujata Avasthi (based in the US, manufactures in India)
