Since her first capsule collection in 2022, Canadian designer Sujitha Shivajothi has been producing finely tailored garments from her one-woman studio in Vancouver. Her latest collection, Capsule 03, places an emphasis on wool and denim jackets tailored to both frame the body and move with it. Liminul got a peek into Shivajothi’s process, where she shared her thoughts about slow fashion craftsmanship and gender-neutral clothing.
Lovers of Yohji Yamamoto will surely love Shivajothi’s vision: androgynous jackets, vests and dress shirts where craftsmanship is flexed through clever uses of buttons and meticulous pleating. But in terms of her influences, Shivajothi gives much credit to her family; her father encouraged her to learn about the art of sharp menswear, and her mother taught her the intricacies of pleating a saree, seen in the pleats of the Asymmetrical Ivory Dress Shirt.
“As a kid, I always sort of went to my dad’s closet and I loved his style because he had a very unique, very tailored look. And that was not something that was very common for young girls to gravitate towards,” says Shivajothi. She expresses that while she loves her Sri Lankan culture, it carried stricter gendered expectations for clothing. Her father, however, let Shivajothi explore the full spectrum of fashion. “I love that my dad was just like, you can wear whatever you want, go for it… my dad used to teach me how to properly press trousers, and when I went to iron the crease down the centre of the trouser, my dad freaked out and told me the crease is deliberate: they put it there to give shape and structure. I remember as a kid being so intrigued by that.”
When she began to make her own income and began shopping for herself, she wondered why she had to shop in divided sections. But the budding gender-neutral fashion industry provided few options either. Shivajothi described the gender neutral clothing market as mostly saturated with “oversized hoodies, sweatpants and t-shirts,” and created her brand to fill the gap in designs that offered more than generic streetwear. “Sometimes you don’t want [sweatpants]; you want a beautifully designed piece that a lot of work went into, or a piece that looks like a work of art.”
I asked Shivajothi what lessons the slow fashion industry has for the rampant fast fashion one.
To her, a lack of knowledge is what defines the fast fashion process. “I think knowledge is what it comes down to. People really need to know where their money is going, what they’re backing, and I like to make that pretty apparent with Shivajyothi; when you buy a piece for me, you’re really investing in me. You believe in my vision and what I’m doing.” From pattern testing and development to detailed seam work, hours of care are reflected in every made-to-order garment.
“I hope you know more people shop with that intention in mind, because oftentimes we just go to the mall and we buy something, and you don’t think twice. Whereas I like to think when a person buys my garment, I’m like, wow, they chose to spend their hard earned money on something I made, so the least I can do is make sure that the item they’re buying is made to last and a beautiful piece that will never go out of style.”
For example, the Denim Crisscross Jacket from her latest Capsule 03 collection took years of prototyping until the design felt just right. “I would have bits of it sort of like on a dress form, and I’d look at it every day and go, ‘what’s missing?’ And I’d add little bits to it until honestly it just clicked.” The result is a jacket that is rather genre defying: part-blazer, part-jacket, at once slouchy and structured, casual and complex.
Shivajothi’s vision is, in summary, an interplay between structure and flow. “Recently, when I shot the photos for [one of my pleated blouses], I put it on a male-identifying figure who was a dancer. He really liked the way it moved and was like, ‘Nobody makes garments like this in Menswear…’ [He] brought so much life to the garment that I didn’t even know existed until I saw it on [him] and the way [he] portrayed it. So that’s what I love about the South Asian influences: you can really draw all these feminine details, but then use it in more masculine silhouettes that we’re sort of used to seeing with tailored garments.”
Milena Pappalardo is a writer and artist based in Toronto and Montreal. She completed her Hon. Bachelor in Political Science at the University of Toronto. She loves to write about the political and psychoanalytic undercurrents of fashion, art and culture.