Woman
in Red
Friday, November 14, 2025
LABEL: AZA Design Studio, Fiji.
Red sari ensemble and crystal jewels from the “60s” segment of the “Girmitiya” collection, launched at the excellent but short lived Fijian Fashion Festival* in 2019.
This collection was inspired by vintage Hindi cinema, “60s Bollywood” and an ode to [the then] 140 years of Indian ancestry in Fiji, an existence that is still if not denied then not completely embraced.
IndoFijians are not considered Pacific Islanders despite being born in the Pacific. They got there because of SUGAR. Voyaged. Across seas.
Indians invented sugar, were the first to trade sugar, having started cultivation between 1500 and 500 BC/BCE. The Brits heard of the ” sweet spice” circa 12th century and that is how Indians became slaves, sorry, ” indentured labourers” in the Pacific. Fiji was not the first, it was the last. many Pacific Islands have Indo blood.
Sugar. Some Bittersweet Truths [21/11]
Mobile view: gallery below
AZA isn’t just an IndoFijian “Indianwear” label based in Fiji. The designer curates from a palette of world history to create garments that represent his origins, his present and the region’s beautiful fusion. AZA clients come from all over the world.
Spotlight on the designer, Zulfikar Ali, here. Interview from 2022.
Anarkali editorial from 2015 [but published in 2025] and a jewellery editorial from 2022.
Photographed in June 2019 in Suva City, Fiji
Photographer: Duane Leewai
Model: Sandhya Nand
“I share the behind the scenes images and stories of this shoot and all the other shoots and times where I have been the face of AZA on Fiji runways. I have had the delightful honour of closing his runway shows a few times, 2018, 2019 when I wore this sari and then again in 2022, the latter caused quite a meltdown… “- story in Publisher’s Log [18/11]
*The YEARBOOK includes a supplement feature about the Bottega Gold Fijian Fashion Festival 2018-19.
THE STYLANDER is a culturalpedia, we introduce readers to aesthetic, cosmopolitan, equitable and progressive information from all over the world. The aforementioned event, although not a new type of event for Fiji, was groundbreaking in many ways and significant to the history of this region.
“The world’s global majority acts as if only the Euroways, whims and wants are what denote talent, excellence and quality.
We are here to show you… a world with… all of us in it. I know you’re afraid of changing.
We can know the future. If we start understanding self and each other in the present. We are not here to end, we are here to begin
If you are a movie/pop culture fan, you know what I am paraphrasing. Whether that’s Sophia Stewart’s ideas or the Wachowskis words… appropriation or honest mistake and inspiration or coincidence, by the latter two; delusion and manipulation or fact or coincidence, by the former? Check what Redditors are saying.” – SN
PS. “That Time I was in The Matrix [the movie, not just this whole thing, and no I’m not an actor.” – Publisher’s Log TS36 DEC.”
QUESTION: Shouldn’t “Bollywood” be called Mollywood now? Or something in at least, Hindi if not Marathi? It used to be called Bombay Cinema? Why is everything still named after Eurowood?
