Richa Singh

Richa Singh’s 2025 thesis collection is a deeply personal and cultural exploration of faith, gender, and identity, rooted in her upbringing within a conservative Hindu household in India. Drawing from lived experiences and religious observation, Singh investigates the complex intersections of gender and devotion in modern Indian society. Her research centers on the Aghoris—an ascetic sect of predominantly male Hindu practitioners devoted to Lord Shiva, who embrace death as a vital counterpart to life. Their radical expressions of faith, including dwelling in cremation grounds, wearing ashes, and practicing nudity, exist largely outside societal norms, yet their freedom to embody such practices remains a male privilege.

In contrast, Singh reflects on the restrained religiosity expected of women in her own community, where cultural prescriptions masked as religious doctrine—such as menstrual taboos, enforced veiling, and exclusion from rituals- uphold a quiet but persistent gender bias. Through this juxtaposition, Singh critiques the gendered disparity in spiritual freedom and the patriarchal systems embedded within cultural practice. Her collection reimagines traditional Indian garments like the saree and dhoti through sustainable textiles, deconstruction, and fluid draping. Each piece serves as a meditation on restriction, resistance, and reinterpretation, translating the silent burdens of imposed beliefs into a bold visual language. Singh’s work is both a celebration of heritage and a reclamation of narrative. It embodies a layered conversation on diversity, not only in religion and gender, but also in the right to question, evolve, and express freely within one's cultural context.

Photographer - Jaden Russell; Videographer - Yiming “Samia” Shen; Video editing and color - J. Connor Ha; Models - Ananya Borle, Tanay Uttamchandani, and Devaugn “Brodie” Brown, and Dalya Inan; Makeup - Spoorti Hegde.