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Forget what you know about New York City being a strict sartorial palette of black-on-black—designer Sheena Sood is here to change all of that. Her colorful, eccentric brand abacaxi brings light and vibrance to pieces inspired by traditional craftsmanship from her travels and South Asian heritage. Here, she shares what it means to be a queer designer in her community and unveils the sources of her inspiration.
Tell us a bit about yourself!
I’m a textile designer and artist and started abacaxi several years ago because I wanted to work with traditional textile techniques from India and around the world, and incorporate them more into contemporary pieces that we want to wear all the time. Abacaxi is named after the Portuguese word for pineapple, one of my favorite musical words attached to a memory of a carefree beach in Bahia, Brazil (and also one of my favorite tropical fruits!). In my line, you can see the inspiration I’ve gathered from my extensive travels and the indigenous textile research I’ve done in places such as Indonesia, Peru, and Mexico. I have been living in Brooklyn for the past 16 years now, and though I travel often, I always love coming back home to NYC.
What significance does Pride have for you?
As a South Asian woman, it hasn’t been easy to share my queer identity in many ways. So Pride feels like a time when those of us who are not always embraced and celebrated by mainstream culture and society get to have our moment and celebrate.
What inspires you?
At the moment, I’m feeling really inspired by summer—the way the sunlight and sky changes so much during these months, by moments of joy, laughter, and by my community. Pride month has me thinking about joy, happiness, idyllic moments and memories, sunshine, and feeling inspired by these parts of life.
As I’m working on my Spring/Summer 2023 collectsion right now, I’ve become inspired by a list of awe-inspiring words from different languages that don’t exist in other tongues, which I found in an email newsletter I subscribe to. It’s originally from a Tumblr page, and I’m still figuring out the connections between these lovely words and the collectsion I’m designing.
How did you conceptualize your current collectsion?
My current Summer collectsion is entitled Stingray. There is so much storytelling, hidden memories, and nostalgia in all of my collectsions and many of my pieces. I started the collectsion by first designing the geometric rainbow ombré Stingray-Dragonfly print, which you see in the Tie-Up Maxi Dress (one of our bestsellers this season). I had this vision of juxtaposing these two very symmetrical, geometric motifs of these two animals and overlaying several different colored ombrés in such a way that the stingrays show up in the negative space of the print.
As I was making it, I started researching the symbolism of stingrays and found they represent adaptability, as they move along with the tides at the ocean floor. For me, personally, they have come to represent overcoming fear. I’ll never forget the first time I went snorkeling and got over my fear of drowning and then discovered an incredibly beautiful, kaleidoscope underwater paradise. It was in Costa Rica and I saw, for the first time, fish of every color of the rainbow alongside baby sharks and stingrays.
