Drastic times call for drastic measures: though an idiom, it still has stood as a testimony for all the great battles that have ever been fought. Be it the battle of Mahabharat, the French revolution or the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and today when the globe is united against one of its strongest invisible enemy: the COVID-19. The faculty and students of National institute of Fashion Technology, Bengaluru are also doing their bit in contributing towards the COVID crisis. Being staying at home in order to protect themselves and the others and practicing social distancing as their greatest weapon; they are also doing their bit in creating stylish armor for their brave warriors who risk their lives every single day by stepping out in order to steal the economy and the human civilization from the grasps of the dirty demon.

 The Students of Foundation program, at NIFT, were given the assignment of designing masks for a specified group of customers as per their will as a part of their Integrated Design Project for the year 2019-20. A class of 40 came up with varying ideas and interpretations of their understandings of the target audience leading to a week long research as to the taste, preferences, background, lifestyles, and struggles of their ultimate consumers. The Research was a way of understanding the expectations and reactions of the consumers to a sudden diversion in their life (the corona virus) and an addition to their everyday clothing. For obvious reasons, nobody, be it of any age group, income level and preferences would like to wear the same clothes just as everybody like a uniform every day for at least a calendar year and hence a much-needed change to the existing masks was required. After analyzing their lifestyles and preferences in depth, the students then came up with inspirations that would be easily accepted by the ultimate consumers. A little bump uphill, was the Checkpoint, wherein the students had to amalgamate their inspirations to the trend forecast/analysis of the upcoming season in order to keep their designs in Vogue and be socially acceptable by the audiences at large. The class not only had to redesign the mask but also had to keep the existing technologies available at hand under consideration since functionality is one of the major parts of any design be it a clothing or a gadget. Their initial ideations were then broken down into keywords, inspiration and mood boards, color boards, Etcetera; and be in line for the final approval before putting their creative minds and colorful Staedtler’s to kick start another sensational design collection by the NIFT family.  The initial designs were then filtered out with the students and faculties thinking alike and were given a final structure before injecting life into them. However, the real stretch of time was when the budding designers and their designs were tested of their functional capabilities with the limited resources available at hand owing to the great lockdown. 

The students being real warriors stood the test of time and defeated yet another enemy. And, thus with limited means came up with beautiful design collections of their own, each different but yet knitted together with a strong foreground of creating a better, contemporary tomorrow: all under the guidance of Mr. Sharanabassapa M Bali and Dr. Yathindra L, as the guiding light, who gave this opportunity to the avid learners and handed over the steering wheel while keeping the gear box under control.