Kangan Arora
45 // Kangan Arora is originally from Punjab in the north of India, but now lives in London. Kangan studied Fashion Design at National Institute of Fashion Technology, India; Surface Textiles at the London College of Fashion; and Textile Design at Central Saint Martins, London. Her inspirations and influences include the crazy chaotic life and street culture in India – graphics on auto-rickshaws and highway trucks, benday Bollywood poster prints, holy cows, a carnival of kites. Kangan runs a small London-based print studio with her good friend Finnish designer Jonna Saarinen, and they produce their own collaborative products under the label Jonna x Kangan. Kangan has exhibited at Pulse, Milan, and at Spoken at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and plans to show at Maison and Objet in Paris. She is a big admirer of Danish lifestyle company Hay, and her dream is to design a collection for them with a playful Indian twist. Kangan aims to remain true to her principles, to be a self-sustaining business and to help put Indian design on the map.
Design Heroes: Marimekko, David Hockney, the unsung artists who decorate highway trucks in India
Cushions
These cushions are from Kangan’s SS13 collection, launched at Pulse, London. All Kangan’s textiles are painstakingly screenprinted by hand using multiple pigment inks on 100% cotton.
Kites Cushion (1)
In the Hindu calendar, the Uttarayan festival is celebrated by the mass flying of colourful kites. The sight of skies filled from dawn till dusk with small paper kites was the inspiration behind Kangan’s ‘Kites’ collection.
Kites Cushion (2)
Kangan says, ‘There’s an inadvertent beauty and playfulness to be found everywhere you look in India; I simply want to transpose these qualities to products that add some verve and vitality to people’s homes and lives. An eye-popping injection of colour will always help raise a smile!’