Lionised for her nostalgic colour palettes and using exclusively deadstock materials, Ahluwalia founded her namesake label in 2018 and has in a short time since won the H&M Design Award 2019, collaborated with Adidas, has been awarded the joint winning LVMH Prize 2020 and has recently been included in Matchesfashion Innovators programme.
Following her first publication, Sweet Lassi, which addressed the fashion industry’s wasteful approach to consumption and production, Jalebi moves “back and forth between imagined and real,” documenting and imagining lives of people through the designer’s eyes.
Accompanied by 3D, VR exhibition and photographed by Laurence Ellis, the project provokes dialogue about the themes of sustainability and diversity. “I hope Jalebi shows the brilliant nuances about our mixed communities and how we learn so much from each other when our minds are open,” Ahluwalia comments. “I also hope that people learn that just because someone has travelled to another land for another life, it does not mean that they deserve to suffer discrimination and systemic racism,” she adds. “Anyone who wants a just and fair society should be outraged at this.”