2009

‘Mandali and Me’, was premiered on the runway of the Zagreb Fashion Week, in November 2008, and partially displayed as a moving art installation at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, USA.

The Mandali and Me collection is a non-commercial art play with impressions of the designer’s life in the USA, where she had moved to from Croatia, in 2006, and her frequent travels to India. It draws an essential human connection between the Indian kurti and the American T-shirt, both familiar clothing items in respective countries, as well as between Pop Art and Pattachitra art. The T-shirt shaped kurtas, made of khadi cloth, were produced in Mumbai, in a facility purportedly founded by Mahatma Gandhi, and were hand painted by Mandali Mendrilla. The images depict impressions of the ancient festival called Ratha-Yatra originating from Puri, Orissa, India. A special interest is drawn to the renderings of the faces of the deities of Subhadra, Jagannatha and Baladeva that appear in the collection and that had become a popular t-shirt decoration item in the USA.