At 12, Yana Ngoba stunned her family and friends by weaving up an Assamese gamocha. Born with grand dreams inside her, Yana grew up quickly, finding ways big and small to realise them. She closely watched her mother, Dangam Ete Ngoba, who assembled her own ornaments and loin looms. That sparked in her a curiosity for the rich crafts of Arunachal Pradesh, and the harmony of nature and culture in them. Tribal cultures of the Northeast, she says, are relatively unexplored. So, she began experimenting with sensual silhouettes and boho. She also replicated accessories made of copper, marble, iron, silver, gold, bamboo, stone, feather, yarn and brass, and designed headgear that was wonderfully wild with feathers and colours. Soon, she was labelled India’s first tribal jewellery designer.
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ust 28 and the self-taught Ngoba has already mesmerised crowds at the London Fashion Week SS16. When she was nominated for the Midland Fashion Award last year, British fashion patrons noticed her. It was then that she found buyers and stockists in England and a chance to showcase her work before them.
Today, the Guwahati-based designer has every big fashion event in the world fed into her schedule. “I have received an invitation to participate in the New York Fashion Week, Los Angeles Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week. But I am looking forward to the shows in Paris and Milan, to be held around February-March next year,” affirms Ngoba, excitedly. Her focus is on tribal fabrics and accessories, including ornaments, shoes, bags and scarves. She uses the fabric and accessories of different parts of the region to collaborate together without losing their originality. “This respects each region’s originality and indicates diversity,” she says. Branded with the tagline ‘Yana, (You Are Not Alone) in Style’, her creations are retailed in Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi and the UK with a price range that starts at `5,000 and scales up to a couple of lakh.
“It is colour that defines energy and aura. So my collection is always colourful, sensuous, mysterious, powerful and beautiful,” she says. The other function of design is the telling of tales. For instance, a certain Naga headgear will have a story of family power behind it. Stories, she feels, enables both the locals and the outsiders to immediately connect with the same culture; fashion achieves that kind of harmony.
The collection she showcased at the London Fashion Week was in collaboration with another designer from the region, Nabam Aka. Their clothes were made on the loin loom, one of the oldest looms in the world and the fabric was hand-woven by the weavers of the Itanagar district in Arunachal Pradesh. The theme was gypsy and boho and handmade jewellery crafted out of hen feathers, agate, bamboo, cane, yarn, silver, brass and jute added vibrance to the theme. Her show was sponsored by the Arunachal Pradesh government. “Though Indian designers like Manish Malhotra and Rohit Bal are well known internationally, people like me need the government’s support to popularise Northeast Indian fashion,” she says.
Fashion comes naturally to the people of the Northeast and Ngoba aims to spill that style all across the globe.