Profile: Ashish Kumar Panchal – Real Leather Design Competitions

Ashish Kumar Panchal

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF DESIGN

I’m Ashish Kumar Panchal, currently pursuing my Master’s in Apparel Design at NID Gandhinagar. I graduated from NIFT Bengaluru, where design became more than just a career path—it became my language of expression. With over three years of experience in bespoke menswear and design education, I’ve worked across creative and academic spaces - from designing couture pieces at Deepee’s and Niamh_by_kri to mentoring students at JD Institute. I enjoy navigating between hands-on making and conceptual storytelling, often using fashion to voice social narratives and question norms. My journey includes collaborations with brands like TCNS (Brand W), intensive craft cluster studies in Toda embroidery, terracotta pottery, and silk weaving, and a series of award-winning fashion show collections exploring identity, illusion, and contrast. Whether it’s backstage at a fashion week or crafting a tech pack, I believe in showing up fully and curiously. I’ve received NIFT’s Extraordinary Service Award, but what I value most are the quiet learnings from each project and the power of empathy in design. My skill set spans advanced draping, garment construction, fashion illustration, makeup and styling, and tools like CLO 3D and Adobe Suite. I also explore other mediums - video editing, public speaking, poetry - because I believe design isn’t limited to fabric; it’s a state of mind. In every space I enter, I try to bring both precision and play. For me, design is a way of making sense of the world - and sometimes, reshaping it.

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WHERE POWER HURTS

Category: Apparel

Competitions: International

This wearable art piece investigates the internal dissonance between what is felt and what is shown – where stability is performed, but discomfort is lived. The garment emerges from the idea that people often carry conflict silently, and in doing so, learn to wear tension like fabric. The final piece distorts the body, not to dramatize it but to externalize emotional imbalance. Forms bulge, slant, and interrupt natural posture – fabric wraps and restricts in a way that denies ease, mimicking how dissonance shows up in the body as restraint, stiffness, or defense. Elements that appear voluminous are not always functional, and where the body is expected to rest, it is instead resisted. In the final photographs, this tension comes through clearly. The silhouette becomes a psychological space – disjointed, asymmetrical, and sometimes claustrophobic. There’s an intentional imbalance in how weight, shape, and exposure are distributed, suggesting a person caught between contradicting roles or feelings. The piece doesn’t scream discomfort – it wears it quietly.