How, for fashion designer Avantika Malhotra, the ocean has been a lifelong inspiration

Avantika Malhotra, who grew up in Hong Kong, has always loved the sea, art and fashion, all of which inspired her graduate collection

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Fashion designer Avantika Malhotra’s collection Whispers in the Current was inspired by her love of the ocean and her scuba diving experiences in Hong Kong. Photo: Jaesa Acton

Mabel Lui

Published: 5:15pm, 1 Aug 2024Updated: 5:28pm, 1 Aug 2024

All her life, fashion designer Avantika Malhotra has had an affinity for the ocean.

Born in Mumbai, on the west coast of India, she spent some of her days as a toddler running around the ship helmed by her captain father – a place she also called home.

Even after she and her family settled on land in Hong Kong, Malhotra’s love affair with the ocean remained. She began scuba diving at the age of 11, and when she was 13 she got her open-water diver certification at Sharp Island.

“The ocean has been a constant presence in my life,” she says. So when it came time for the young designer, now a graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York, to create her thesis collection, the ocean was a natural inspiration.

When she was a toddler, Avantika Malhotra lived on the ship that was helmed by her captain father. Photo: courtesy of Avantika Malhotra

The collection, named Whispers in the Current, went on to win awards at the 2023 International Design Awards and Muse Design Awards, and led Malhotra to be recognised as one of 46 fashion future graduates by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) last year.