Designer Somya Lochan is not simply crafting garments—she’s weaving narratives, dissecting emotions, and translating cultural depth into wearable forms. Her early experiences were accentuated with mismatched childhood outfits to hand-stitching garlands in her nani’s garden, which shaped her unconventional approach to design. Now, through her Delhi-based label Quarter, she distils India’s rich textile heritage into thoughtful, minimal forms that speak volumes.
We recently talked to the Gen-Next designer from Lakme Fashion Week to understand her creative journey—from travelling across India’s textile clusters to launching Quarter as a modern reinterpretation of craftsmanship. Her collection for the fashion week, *Dichotomy of Loss*, is a profound reflection on grief, incorporating experimental techniques and psychological studies to craft garments that embody both vulnerability and strength.
In a nutshell, Quarter is an ongoing dialogue between heritage and innovation—a design philosophy that treats clothing as more than just fabric, but as an extension of human experience. She deconstructs it for us further.
Finding Somya
Honestly, I think a big reason why artists do what they do is to better understand themselves, haha. I'm from Ranchi, where I spent my childhood, and later went on to study textiles at NIFT Bengaluru. Now, I run a Delhi-based design label called Quarter.
Something quite amusing came up recently when I was looking through old childhood photos—must’ve been around four or five years old. I noticed I was always oddly dressed: messy hair, mismatched socks, sweaters in summer. When I asked my mom about it, she told me I used to insist on dressing myself and wouldn’t let anyone else interfere. I’m grateful she never imposed her ideas of how a child should look—because, in a way, that freedom became the foundation for everything I do today.
My romance with design probably began long before I realised it. At my nani’s house, there was this beautiful garden where we’d spend hours making garlands—mixing mogra one day, roses with raw mangoes the next, sometimes even jamun. They were whimsical combinations that we’d stitch together with no restrictions. I think I picked up a needle for the first time when I was around six, and honestly, we have not stopped putting things together since.
Her Quarter
My initiation into textiles began with a bold step—deciding to stop everything for a year and a half and really experiencing crafts by being present at the clusters and sites. I travelled across Gujarat, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, and Assam to work with clusters and NGOs. It was during this time that I realized a simple truth: in everything we do, we contribute in quarters—one part to the larger whole. The logo however, is a cuboid and the Quarter of a cuboid is a cuboid, so even if it is a Quarter, it's a whole.
And so, Quarter became my Quarter in the evolving narrative of modern Indian design. As I delved deeper into textiles, I found myself breaking down their vast complexity into 0s and 1s—an approach that now forms the very foundation of our work.
Dichotomy of Loss
The collection explores the contrast between absence and presence, fragility and resilience. The collection plays with contrasting textures—delicate, sheer fabrics juxtaposed with structured, heavier materials—symbolizing the emotional weight of loss. Dichotomy of Loss explores the deeply personal nature of grief. To bring this concept to life, an experiment was conducted with eight individuals, each invited to share their unique perspective on grief. They were then given a shirt, a pair of pants, and scissors, with complete freedom to cut the garments as they contemplated their emotions. For that matter, even the makeup that we did came from a discussion with the brilliant Manisha Melwani, where we studied how the human face changes when it experiences different stages of grief and the dots were a representation of the same.
The resulting collection draws from both the physical outcomes and the psychological insights gained through this process. Grief, much like loss, is an intensely individual journey, unbounded by rules, paths, or conclusions. It transcends dimensions and defies logic. This collection serves as a poignant reflection on these profound, universal experiences. When wearing those garments, I want people to feel powerful within their vulnerabilities, a dichotomy.
Giving structure to tradition
Quarter is a concept-driven design studio that merges India’s rich textile heritage with a clean, leaning towards modernist design language. Its unique approach lies in distilling the emotional and cultural complexity of traditional crafts into minimal, engineered forms—treating garments not as products but as visual expressions of psychological states. With an experimental, reflective process rooted in form and structure, Quarter blends handcraft with modernity, offering a deeply thoughtful and progressive reinterpretation of Indian design
Next up
Our next collection is truly an extension of the current one. I am very excited to share more about it. It will introduce two new elements, firstly, our first ever womenswear collection and secondly, a new project that will form a core of our philosophy moving forward.
Words Hansika Lohani
Date 2.05.2025
