In a pale studio where the soft natural light blurs the boundary between skin and sculpture, two women stand encased in garments unlike anything the traditional eye might expect. Constructed from strips of interlocking wood, adorned with gleaming industrial fastenings, and suspended on delicate chain-link straps, their presence is less that of models and more that of moving monuments—bodies reimagined as mobile installations. These are not garments in the conventional sense; they are radical manifestations of Linked Love, a graduation collection by Mumbai-based designer Manasi Parmar, whose exploration of wearable design rewires the intersection between architecture, sustainability, and fashion’s capacity for narrative.
A Quiet Revolution in Materiality
Parmar’s work subverts expectation with intention. In place of soft cotton, fluid silk, or even sustainable bamboo viscose, she invokes wood—a medium historically aligned with rigidity, structure, and permanence. Wood is not traditionally draped, but built. It is a material that conjures shelters, not silhouettes. Yet in Linked Love, its tactile grain becomes gentle curvature, its planes a canvas for adornment, its spine transformed into the language of seams and patterns.
The garments speak to a paradox: how can that which is hard become supple? How might timber, with its fibrous stillness, lend itself to a body in motion?
Through experimentation with modular construction and surface manipulation, Parmar resolves this riddle. Each wooden segment is cut into calculated, articulate pieces that are joined with industrial hinges, rivets, and clips—allowing them to bend, flow, and shift. A wooden bodice built from geometric panels breathes like armor softened by intimacy. A corset-like structure with gleaming hardware mimics the gridlines of a blueprint, echoing architecture’s influence while remaining resolutely human in form.
Between Craft and Concept: An Architectural Language
There is a distinct tectonic sensibility to Parmar’s methodology. Her garments are not sewn—they are assembled. Each form is a modular ecosystem, capable of both structure and adaptation. Much like a tessellated facade or an engineered lattice, the garments hinge on precision, both mathematically and metaphorically. They suggest a design philosophy that is informed by architecture, not merely inspired by it.
Her visual vocabulary draws from construction scaffolds, ribbed frameworks, and minimalist brutalism. Yet, despite the harshness of these references, the result is remarkably poetic. The wooden slats, when paired with the vulnerable softness of human skin, cultivate a juxtaposition that is at once protective and exposing, encased and liberated. Chains, bolts, and structural straps suspend from the shoulder not as ornamental touches, but as functional metaphors—reminding the viewer that garments are not passive but dynamic agents of expression.
Intimacy and Objecthood
There is a compelling dialogue between body and object at the heart of Linked Love. In the captured images, the wearers are neither posed mannequins nor passive muses. Instead, they engage with the camera and each other as if to declare agency over what they wear. Their eye contact is unflinching. One woman drapes her arm over the other’s shoulder, not as an accessory but as co-sculptor in a shared design story.
In another image, a woman strides across a stark stage, her heels clicking against a floor illuminated only by directional light. Her garment—a fusion of triangular wooden panels—moves subtly as she walks. Though geometric and angular, the outfit adapts to her stride. This image, cinematic in its loneliness, transforms the wood-clad body into a totemic figure: woman as architectural element, as structure, as statement.
The visual language insists that these garments are not costumes or provocations; they are extensions of the self. Parmar constructs her pieces not only to adorn but to hold space—physically and metaphorically—for identity, autonomy, and transformation.
A Sustainable Syntax
The collection’s use of wood as textile is not purely aesthetic or sculptural—it is ideologically grounded in the ethics of sustainability. In a moment where fashion is being asked to reckon with its impact, Parmar’s material choices become polemic acts. Timber, when responsibly sourced, is renewable. It decomposes. It ages with dignity. It does not leach microplastics into oceans or clog landfills for centuries.
But beyond ecology, her use of timber is also about slowness—a counterpoint to the churn of fast fashion. Wood requires time: to grow, to harvest, to finish. It necessitates deliberation. Each wooden panel in Parmar’s work, individually fastened with screws or hinges, reflects an ethic of intentional labor. The result is not merely sustainable in its material footprint, but in its philosophy of craft as resistance to disposability.
There’s also an embedded circular logic to her construction methods. Modular parts can be disassembled, repurposed, and recombined. Nothing is glued or wasted. The garments may one day outlive their original form—but live on as different objects, embodying a new phase in a continuous lifecycle.
Linked Love as Multidisciplinary Manifesto
The name of the collection, Linked Love, is quietly revelatory. It suggests an ecosystem of interdependence: between parts and wholes, between wearer and material, between craft and message. The word “linked” connotes connection—not just structurally in the garments’ modularity, but thematically in the fusion of disciplines.
Parmar’s process draws from product design, furniture making, architectural modeling, and sculpture. In doing so, she contributes to a growing design dialogue that rejects disciplinary silos. Her work is not only for the runway but for the museum, for the classroom, for the ideation studio. It models a way of thinking that embraces hybridization, foregrounding interdisciplinary innovation as the true future of design.
She is not the first to play with hard materials in fashion—Issey Miyake’s origami pleats, Hussein Chalayan’s techno-futurism, and Iris van Herpen’s algorithmic couture all come to mind—but what Parmar brings is a raw, architectural grounding. Her materiality is not mystical or digital; it is earthly, tactile, and mechanical. Her garments do not fly or transform or light up—they simply stand with intention. And in that stillness lies power.
Emotional Geometry and the Future of Form
There’s something profoundly emotive in the visual rhythm of Linked Love. The geometry—so precise and hard-edged—becomes vulnerable in contrast to soft, human forms. It’s a reminder that structure is not devoid of emotion. The curved planes, the gradient of wood grain, the quiet shine of polished hinges—each detail carries a sensory intimacy.
In a fashion landscape flooded with ephemeral trends and performative sustainability, Parmar’s work offers a blueprint for an aesthetic of longevity. These pieces are not made for mass production, nor are they designed for trend cycles. They are conceptual artefacts—each one a wearable manifesto on the possibilities of material, the architecture of dress, and the emotional resonance of objects.
As Linked Love continues to circulate through the digital sphere and perhaps future exhibitions, its impact will likely ripple beyond fashion. For designers, architects, material scientists, and sustainability advocates, Parmar’s collection stands as an open invitation: to reconsider what garments can be, to question how materials define identity, and to explore the infinite elasticity of what we wear—not just on our bodies, but on our minds.
