What is up, y'all?

I'm late on a lot of posts and content, but let's start with what I actually care about. 

This is NeoUrban Desi

What is Urban Desi?

Around the 2018 era, there was a prominent online wave of South Asians pushing their culture forward in an attempt to promote acceptance of one's background, culture, and history. A movement for South Asians in the diaspora to connect with their roots in a loud manner. The urban desi era could be broken down into a few categories, including music, art,...and fashion.

Indowestern fashion was becoming a little louder, with styles including sarees + jeans, tee shirts + lehengas, and normalizing wearing cultural jewelry on the daily, rather than reserving them for only ethnic functions. It was a statement online that showcased the fusion of western streetwear with an undeniable south asian twist.

With all respect to the era, it is also undeniably dated. In my personal opinion, I believe that none of those styles have aged well. I've seen the saree + jeans combo die pretty quickly, and the combo of the baggy tee tucked into a lehenga seemed a little too messy for me. The concept was there, but I couldn't find a photo of the execution that I still thought looked good enough. But then upon reflecting on my own fashion, realized that I wear traditional jewelry ALL the time, not as an Indo-Western fashion statement, but because I am too lazy to ever take them off!!! I wear juttis like every day not because I want to wear a piece of my culture with me, but because they're the only flat shoes I own! 😂 Whenever it comes time to buy shoes, I ALWAYS buy heels. I haven't bought a new set of sneakers in years!
So I realized that maybe my problem with all the old Urban Desi inspo is that they look too staged! Maybe they didn't feel realistic or like lived-in enough for me. And because it didn't look natural, it becomes one of those dated outfits, like how we look back on cringe looks from our teens. 

I was not successful.

Lol, Ganieve and I wanted to do a bit of the shoot in a lehenga, but then Ganieve ended up liking ALL of our ideas and wanted every single one in the lehenga, so rather than a lived-in Urban Desi shoot, we ended up just doing a Dallas Desi shoot, and you know what? I'm not that mad lol. 

Presenting:

Dallas City Desi Aesthetic

featuring @Eve_saint_laurant

Starting off in the most NYC-like park in Dallas...
📍Griggs Park

Since we wanted to rep our city, I thought it would be cute to get some shots with the skyline, but I had a very solid vision for golden hour. Unfortunately, it was a grey kind of cloudy sunset, so we dawdled around with the drone for a bit.

The con of shooting at night is that my camera is mad old. My t3i does not do well in low light. The pro is that I was actually dying to shoot with flash anyway! As we go through the shoot, more likely than not, every flash photo was my request, and every none-flash is a Ganieve request lol