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If you’ve been up and about your Instagram feed, Elina Banerjee’s eclectic style and unabashedly bold take on the culture must have struck a chord with you.
We, at Homegrown, take a deep dive into the lawyer-turned-creative’s artistic pulse and rebellious style and bring you the entire scoop on the coolest fashion icon on the block.
For Elina Banerjee, the tryst with art has been a long simmering process of growth and discovery through self-documentation. Venturing into fashion has been a newly found creative liberation that reflects in the fashion icon’s experiments with different styles and fabrics who runs on a different day, different aesthetic spunk that tends to keep things interesting — think powdery, pastel eyes, paint-stroke liner, a dash of accessorising and a diverse pick of silhouettes, all of which are underpinned with the spirit of redefining how we think about beauty.
‘I believe fashion has always been an area of intrigue for me, however it requires a sense of self-acceptance to showcase your style. I was only recently able to achieve that sense of acceptance and I intend to grow and experiment more with the ideas of how fashion evolves and how I grow alongside it.’
— Elina Banerjee
Describing her sense of style as ‘Prevailing, Intriguing and Experimentative’, Elina’s shies away from narrowing her fashion imprint to a straightjacketed genres that rely on fleeting trends or jumping on the mainstream bandwagon.
Breaking the constricts of a patriarchal society that plays upon controlling women’s bodies and sense of expression, Elina chooses to challenge the set norms every day by enveloping herself in silhouettes that power her identity and liberation.
BEYOND THE BINARY
For Elina, the freedom of fashion expression has allowed the vocabulary around her own identity as a queer artist to catch up. From pivotal unlearning of imbibed patriarchal norms to a binary breaking sense of expression and style, Elina, who identifies as Bisexual stands witness to the fact that fashion can be a powerful form of gender affirmation, a unique signifier of personal identity and a fun, creative way to intercept identity through an artistic medium. The fashion industry is no stranger to the predicament that ‘fashion is queer and queer is fashion’ as it constantly evolves and engages with creating safe spaces and challenging heteronormative beauty standards.
“I came out as a bi-sexual woman in the year 2019 and it has given me such a greater perspective of my sexuality that was buried under my ignorance and the imbibed patriarchal norms. I think my newfound sexuality has refined my taste and also made me freer when doing fashion related documentation... I think my newfound sexuality has refined my taste and also made me freer when doing fashion related documentation. Queerness and fashion are the foundation of this industry ranging from inclusivity of all the evolving patterns to brilliant queer and Trans designers. Queer culture has a lot of different components in fashion, it is incredibly diverse and has a niche for just about anyone and it manages to bring forth a crossover with other fashion subcultures. Personally, the LGBTQIA+ community tends to incorporate gender dynamics and androgyny into their fashion, playing with the idea of masculine or feminine clothing and I believe neutrality of gender in fashion is a welcome change.”
— Elina Banerjee
Drawing inspiration from the likes of Alexander Mcqueen, Rick Owens and Azzedine Aliaa’s exquisite eye for detail and all things couture, Elina charts her course slowly and steadily as she aims to imbibe conscious ideas into her artistic journey.
ON INDIVIDUALITY
In a Tik Tok frenzied algorithm that rides high on the next fleeting fad, The buzzing fashionista aims to carve her own niche and solely creates from a place of sheer individuality. While social media opens up a world of exposure and a massive audience to showcase one’s work, the artist reveals that her take on art relies on dynamic energy that features her dabbling around in a fun bunch of ensembles and sneakers that often spark conversations and evolving ideas of the self.
For example, I appreciate the creation of sneakers and the streetwear fashion industry and with that my content earmarks me to be someone who would be a “sneakerhead”, however, I come from a school of thought that art is something that you find in any medium and me creating artwork through self-portrait’s and whilst enjoying sneakers is a dynamic nature of me.
— Elina Banerjee
In an increasingly shape-shifting industry that drives high on creating empowering art and building an inclusive community questions everything and constantly rewrites narratives, Elina Banerjee breaks through the noise by having difficult conversations and championing the cause of conscious creativity.
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