Bisma Jay

For these designs I wanted to make streetwear styled sweaters based off Muslim poetry. I was heavily inspired by the clothing brand “Rasta” which is based in Lahore and really admired their use of cultural symbolism and methods of printing onto sweaters. I ended up creating two designs, the first one is based off of a poem by Hafiz, which goes as following: 

“It happens all the time in heaven, 

And some day, It will begin to happen 

Again on earth - 

That men and women who are married,  

And men and men who are Lovers, 

And women and women,  

Who give each other Light, 

Often get down on their knees, And while so tenderly 

Holding their lovers hand, 

With tears in their eyes. Will sincerely speak, saying, 

My dear, How can I be more loving to you; 

How can I be more kind?" 

(Hafiz 1320-1389) 

I liked how this poem was very inclusive of queer identities and so I printed the full poem in Urdu on the front of the sweater. I then created an illustration on the back of two women intertwined with each other. Additionally, the background of the print was inspired by the architecture at Badshahi Mosque in Lahore.  

I wanted to include pomegranates in one of the designs because they're so beautiful and have a lot of cultural significance. The second design was inspired by a poem by Rumi, called “The Laughing Pomegranate”. For the back print, I took a photo of myself deseeding a pomegranate while wearing traditional bracelets, rings and henna on my hands. I then glitched the image so it could fit better into a streetwear kind of style on the back of the sweater and added some text details on the front as well as on the sleeves. To print the image onto fabric, I used solarfast dye and exposed a negative directly onto the fabric then sewed the patch onto the back of the sweater. All the other text details were silkscreened onto the fabric.