Prof. Bhaviya Rana
Associate Professor,
School of Design, Anant National University
The TVC Media Team had the privilege of talking to Prof. Bhaviya Rana, Associate Professor at the School of Design, Anant National University. Her research, “Blending Tradition with Technology: Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Future of Fashion,” explores the innovative intersection of indigenous zero-waste pattern cutting and modern digital tools like CLO3D. Through this work, Prof. Rana champions a future for the fashion industry that is both sustainable and deeply conscious of its cultural heritage.
Your research connects indigenous garment-making traditions with advanced digital tools such as CLO3D. What inspired you to bring these seemingly different worlds together?
The true inspiration for this study was my experience working with global fashion brands and close interactions with traditional craft communities in Gujarat. After working for almost 20 years in the industry and academia, I have witnessed how technology-driven systems have increased speed, scalability and efficiency. However, fast-paced production has also created grave challenges, such as landfills, overproduction and detachment from material processes.
On the other hand, craftspeople adopted systems that embodied sustainability, cultural resilience, and ethnic knowledge, which were revealed during my fieldwork in Gujarat’s craft-rich region of Bhuj. Block printers, dyers and weavers were among the craftspeople I met, who viewed design as a conversation with the material. Their methods were presented as an innate, lived ethic of resourcefulness and respect, which is passed across generations.
Experiencing these two worlds sharpened my desire to build a bridge between heritage and innovation. For me, indigenous systems represent grounded wisdom that must not be overlooked, while digital tools like CLO3D offer a platform for adaptability and communication with global audiences. By bringing these two into a dialogue, I aim to construct a hybrid framework that enables the evolution of cultural practices without losing their essence. The approach is to build a conscious strategy to embed responsibility and longevity into design practices, ensuring that it remains locally rooted and globally relevant.
Can you share an example of a traditional technique that translated particularly well into the digital workflow?
Traditional draping practices and handcrafted surface design techniques provided compelling case studies for my research. The sari, for instance, is a length of unstitched fabric whose identity emerges not from tailoring but from the act of draping. It demonstrates how precision, rhythm, and cultural symbolism can transform fabric into a garment without waste. When approached through CLO3D, the sari revealed extraordinary potential for experimentation. This digital tool enabled the manipulation of pleats, folds and fluidity while preserving the essence of draping as both a technical and cultural act. The digital environment enabled repeated experimentation without excessive fabric consumption, reinforcing sustainability in process and outcome.
Similarly, handcrafted traditions like block printing work well in digital design because their intrinsic value is found in the philosophy of imperfection, tactility and storytelling, as well as in the visual motif. To allow their spirit to influence new digital design languages, I captured the underlying design logic pattern repetition, rhythm and narrative layering of these practices in digital workflows, avoiding the temptation to replicate them in sterile perfection. This strategy helped me to frame digital tools as amplifiers rather than as alternatives to tradition, enabling cultural practices to enter new arenas of innovation, education and international discourse without losing their impact.
Your study highlights sustainability through zero-waste fashion. How do you see these indigenous approaches solving today’s environmental challenges in the fashion industry?
Many traditional clothing items exhibit ideas directly consistent with modern zero-waste design concepts. Many traditional clothing items have concepts directly aligned with contemporary zero-waste design principles, even though they were never formally referred to as such. Instead, they were born out of a culture of necessity, material scarcity and respect for resources. In my research, I have been impressed by how these practices have prefigured the sustainability discourse for centuries. Instead of presenting sustainability as a fad or technical fix, they present it as a lived, cultural mindset. For example, in indigenous tailoring logics, rectangular layouts are commonly used to minimise waste, and draping techniques prioritise longevity and adaptability.
The ease with which these logics mesh with digital technologies is astounding. For example, before a single piece of fabric is cut, designers can use CLO3D to visualise and refine clothing using waste-free principles. This duality holds enormous promise for today’s fashion systems, which still struggle with overproduction and textile waste. In addition to its material efficiency, incorporating indigenous methods brings back the values of patience, care and respect for fabric as a living resource.
Such viewpoints provide a cultural correction in a field where fast cycles and disposability are the norm. They ask us to change how we think about fabric and not look at it as a commodity, but as a resource with cultural, environmental and human value. Therefore, when combined with digital tools, indigenous approaches become more than just sentimental allusions; they become practical answers to today’s problems.
Digitisation often raises concerns about losing the ‘human touch.’ How did you ensure cultural essence and authenticity were preserved while moving to digital simulations?
One of the biggest dangers of digitisation is that it can reduce craft to data points, losing its cultural significance in the process. Therefore, rather than creating exact replicas, my strategy was based on preserving the spirit. Craft traditions strongly emphasise rhythm, irregularity and tactility. Flaws are not seen as defects but rather as the maker’s signature. I tried to convert this philosophy into digital workflows in my research.
I experimented with layering, textural gradations and subtle variations that echoed the lived quality of traditional craft instead of striving for flawless perfection.
For example, to avoid the sterility of flat, homogeneous digital fields, I ensured that minute changes in tone or pattern placement were maintained when modelling surfaces influenced by block printing or natural dyeing. This shift allowed the simulations to discuss the process instead of just the result.
The objective was always to create a parallel language that respected its roots rather than digitising craft reductively. I ensured that technological advancement and cultural essence could coexist by establishing digital space as an interpretive tool. This method emphasises that careful application and technology can expand craft into new creative and pedagogical contexts while preserving its human values and cultural depths.
Through your prototypes and digital archives, what were some of the most surprising insights you gained about merging heritage with technology?
The realisation that many indigenous practices are essentially future-focused has been one of the most important lessons I’ve learnt from my current work with prototypes. Their sustainable efficiencies, geometric layouts and proportional logics are highly compatible with design methodologies currently linked to digital innovation. The linear presumption that technology is progressive and tradition is static is called into question by this observation. Instead, it illustrates how craftspeople have long worked within structures that resemble modern computational and systemic thinking.
My main focus at this point has been on investigating how digital platforms like CLO3D can be used to create prototypes that embody these logics, providing waste-conscious experimentation while maintaining cultural values. I intend to build digital archives in the next three years to continue this exploration. These archives will serve as dynamic educational resources rather than just static repositories, enabling scholars, designers and students around the world to access intricate heritage processes.
This developing project will show how digital media can spread indigenous practices without depriving them of their cultural richness. Therefore, combining heritage and technology is not just a technical endeavour but also a rethinking of knowledge systems, confirming that indigenous design logics are living frameworks for a sustainable future rather than artefacts from the past.
How do you envision this framework being adopted, whether in fashion education, by independent designers, or by larger-scale industries?
This framework offers unique yet related applications in independent design, industry and education. It has the ability to shift the conversation about sustainability in education from technical effectiveness to cultural awareness. Students can interact with indigenous systems as illustrations of design philosophies based on longevity and material respect, rather than just as case studies of craft. As a result, a new generation of designers views sustainability as an ethical and creative obligation.
The framework gives independent designers the chance to experiment without having to pay for numerous prototypes. Innovative collections that respect heritage and reduce waste can be produced by fusing digital tools with indigenous design logics. This method allows them to work within the expanding slow and conscious fashion movement while also enhancing their creative vocabulary.
The scalability of this framework is especially important for bigger industries. Utilising zero-waste layouts for digital prototyping enables waste reduction at the mass production level, where the environmental impact is most significant. Global fashion’s creative scope is increased through the incorporation of various cultural viewpoints into design vocabularies. The framework, which positions sustainability as a cultural and industrial imperative, ultimately provides a means of bringing efficiency, diversity, innovation and responsibility together.
On a personal note, as a researcher and educator, what do you hope the next generation of fashion students and designers will take away from your work?
My biggest personal goal is for the upcoming generation of fashion designers to understand that design is just as much a responsibility as an act of creativity. I’ve learnt from indigenous traditions that resource awareness, community cooperation and patience are as important as technical proficiency or beauty. Thanks to the global digital environment, I have learnt to appreciate flexibility, creativity and the intuition to envision different futures.
The most exciting opportunities for practice and education lie at the intersection of these two sets of values. Neither technology nor heritage should be seen as something that transcends human creativity or as something that is set in stone. Instead, technology can be a tool that makes more deliberate, conscious design possible, and heritage is a dynamic framework that changes over time.
We can transform fashion into an inclusive, sustainable and meaningful system if upcoming designers embrace this balance and see digital tools as enablers rather than as sterile, fabric as not disposable and craft as not obsolete. I want my work to convey that design has the ability to honour innovation and culture by fusing the past and the future.
