WHAT IS TONE DEAF?
Tone Deaf is an exercise in contextualization. It is a method for placing my contradictory aesthetic sensibilities—across culture, motif, and craft—into productive conflicts to produce harmonious syntheses. The idea emerged from my experience as a teenager learning to produce music with no formal training. I found that notes which theoretically fail to work together, are out of tune or in the wrong key, achieve harmony when work is done to consider the note that comes before and after. If they are properly contextualized, there is no such thing as a wrong note. Tone Deaf is to contemporary fashion what jazz was to classical music.
This realization provided a framework to create from pure intuition. A technique for crafting artistic order from chaotic inputs; with an aim to make only that which resonates deeply without regard for commerciality, traditional forms, or consensus aesthetic practices. Rather, there is a dedicated focus on slowly produced, masterfully crafted pieces.
Ultimately, Tone Deaf is a vessel for projects that require research beyond the Instagram algorithm, dedication to immersive learning, and a focus on deeply personal storytelling through design.
DROP 1 PROLOGUE
Drop 1 is a synthesis between my two foremost aesthetic preferences: the western silhouette and the motifs, textures, and craftsmanship of Pakistan. Various trips home between 2022 and 2024 involved detailed investigation into who was responsible for keeping the ancient traditions of moti kashidakari (bead-embroidery) and Ajrak (block printing) alive. From my hometown Karachi I swept across the Sindh province, the resting place of one of the world’s earliest major cities (Mohenjo Daro), in search of local artisans to understand the depth of their mastery and how best to provide it prominence. Revealed to me was the unique importance of both appreciating master craftsmanship in an efficiency-addicted age and illuminating dying arts in a industry hell-bent on acceleration toward singularity.
SENSIBILITIES
Inspirations for Tone Deaf that inspire, guide and shape the experiences that make it.
CRAFT / MANUFACTURING
Tone Deaf advocates a return to dedicated mastery. In a time where technological efficiency dominates every corner of our collective psyche, Tone Deaf aims to elevate the status of time-honored and traditional crafts that necessitate years of arduous repetition to perfect.
Drop 1 puts an emphasis on artisans whose entire physical and spiritual lives were spent refining the techniques of Ajrak and bead-embroidery. Their work is more than just a job -- it is a breathing relic of an era where artists strived for divinely-inspired perfection.
AJRAK
Used in our bandanas, Ajrak is a method of decorating fabric six-inches at a time with hand-carved wooden blocks dipped in ink. Organized by the central principle of all Islamic art, mizan (balance), the Ajrak artisan is given “unrestrained freedom to create” within the geometrical bounds of the block. “With a strong inner belief of achieving perfect synchronization...the block-maker brings a sense of unity, coherence and order in the patterning..." of the seemingly endless possible designs that fill the rectangle’s contents.
The spiritual and material history of the subcontinent bleeds into each six-inch block. Ajrak is nearly as old as civilized humanity itself. The technique’s origins trace back to 3000BC in the Sindh province of modern day Pakistan, when the Indus River birthed one of the world’s earliest cities, Mohenjo-daro.
The Indus River was integral to the craft’s development, providing both a site for washing cloth and the water needed to grow Indigo. In its earliest documented use, Ajrak is donned by the Priest-King depicted by the most famous stone sculpture of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Across epochs the art and its influence flourished until it dwindled during the industrial revolution, a development which denigrated the importance of time-intensive craftsmanship in international trade. Partition between India and Pakistan splintered the clusters of Ajrak masters further, and its cultural structure dissolved.
Still, across east Pakistan and west India, the heirs to the masters of the millenia-old vocation continue to edge towards mastery in their respective pockets. Their work is a breathing relic of an era where man strived for divinely inspired perfection. They live as if to say “we know it’s unachievable, but we strive to achieve it anyway.” A healthy contradiction to embody.
BEADING
The form of hand embroidery beading displayed on the black pants has no singular name. Its history is therefore less contained than Ajrak’s. A direct translation is useful. In Urdu, “moti kashidakari” literally means bead embroidery.
Pakistani moti kashidakari originated during the Mughal period to embellish kurtas, rugs, and stoles. Inspired by natural forms like cauliflower, mangoes, and blossoms, the work of the beader is the work of a human interpreting the work of the divine in producing nature.
Motivating the hands of each embroiderer is the impulse to intensely observe the objective world in order to create a subjective rendition. Each weaving movement is an embodiment of the universal obligation to emulate perfection.