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PLATFORM 2026: Phulkari for the machine age
Phulkari means "flower work". It is the darning-stitch embroidery Punjabi women made for their own homes. It's my home town style. In its figurative sainchi form, it recorded the world around them, down to the trains that reached Lahore in the 1860s. I built this Recraft Style from three public-domain pieces: a sainchi festival veil and a Danga phulkari from the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and a 19th-century Punjab shawl from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Then I asked what that needle would record in 2026: delivery drones, metro trains, EV chargers, smartphones and delivery riders, stitched into a 2026 phulkari archive, a ready-to-wear capsule and an avant-garde runway. The flowers stayed. The machines changed.
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What if the Old Masters designed sportswear?
While taking part in the Recraft contest, I started thinking about how to mix classical painting with modern brands. I experimented with 18th–19th-century oil painting aesthetics and thought: why not take this idea further and create an entire sportswear brand around it?
Classic art, modern athletes, contemporary fashion. A little unexpected? Maybe. But that's what makes it fun! So, I created a sportswear brand concept that brings these two worlds together. The result is right below 👇
Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/ae17a521-566c-457e-9482-d4b94157111f
Archive references:
Sick art direction
Usbong is Tagalog for "bud," the moment a flower first breaks open.
I dug into Flora de Filipinas (1877–1883), a 19th-century botanical atlas of Philippine plants, through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Wikimedia Commons. I turned its hand-colored plates into a fictional women's football club.
Every native flower became gear:
Dapdap → home kit
Banaba → away kit
Caballero → boots
Santan + gumamela → goalkeeper gloves
Sanggumay → match ball
Makahiya → the supporter's scarf
Makahiya is the "shy" plant, the one that folds when you touch it. It's also covered in thorns, and that's the whole idea: these flowers aren't soft or decorative. They bite. Worn by striker Maya Flores, #29, the collection reclaims flowers as fierce, not fragile.
Bella, this is sooo cool!!!
Kalighat 2026: The Machines Are the New Babus
Kalighat paintings were cheap bazaar watercolours sold in 1880s Calcutta, and they were satire: they mocked the city's new rich, dandies who aped their British masters and lounged while servants fanned them.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on five anonymous Kalighat sheets from the Cleveland Museum of Art and Wellcome Collection, keeping the bold single outline, flat colour and empty paper ground.
Then I turned the satire on 2026: the machines are the new babus. Phones smoke hookahs on velvet chairs, robot vacuums ride in palanquins, and humans fan, carry and groom their devices. Same masters, new hardware.
Social post: https://lnkd.in/p/gXJn_FQQ
