AIFT (Adaa Institute of Fashion Technology)
Ground Floor, Gurbaksh Plaza, 153, Jagat Farm, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201310, India
https://www.adaabazaar.com/
Nestled within the sprawling Adaa Institute of Fashion Technology campus in Rajouri Garden, West Delhi, AIFT pulsates as a discreet but remarkable music micro-culture. While the college is outwardly known for grooming fashion designers and merchandisers, the alumni keep returning for the underground studio tucked beneath the glass-and-steel library: Studio 01.
A repurposed 1950s textile workshop, Studio 01 retains its red brick walls and has been veined with acoustic pine panels. Track lights slide along the vaulted ceiling like runways, a playful nod to fashion rather than music, and the far wall is lined with songbird blue acoustic foam that students stitched into quilted waveforms. A 48-channel digital mixing console—donated in 2017 by alumnus Armaan Hans—sits at the heart; its surface is laser-etched with the institute logo redesigned as a treble clef. Vintage recorders from AIR’s archives flank it like sentinels, still capable of ¼-inch tape overdubs for students who want the saturation of passing fashion merchandising—and recorded music—through celluloid skin.
Access is jealously guarded: only 35 “sonic members” hold key-cards. Admission to the list means submitting a five-minute original piece, anonymously screened by a rotating jury of past students who have gone on to compose for Vogue India runway tracks or DJ at Lakmé Fashion Week after-parties. When the sacred door buzzes open, footwear must be left in a converted drum case; inside, socks glide over recycled sari rugs dyed deepest indigo to deaden footfall.
The repertoire mirrors its eclectic pedigree: modular synthesizers murmur beside patchworks of Rajasthani khartal loops; sitar drones fold into French touch-house; lo-fi hip hop samples the rustle of tissue paper during garment draping sessions in a neighboring lab. Wednesday nights are “Loose Seams,” an open jam where vocal looper Vidhi Khurana layers choral textures over Bengal silk looms; Thursday is patch-bay workshop: fashion CAD wall-plugs double as TRS cables, allowing a classroom projector to become an oscilloscope.
Annual flagship event “Thread & Tone” happens every March on the rooftop amphitheater. Runway lights dim to 22 bpm heartbeat strobe while final-year designers walk their collections accompanied only by bespoke scores mixed just hours earlier in Studio 01. In 2023, one segment melded the creaking treadle of a Singer sewing machine with the distorted breath of a model counting down a fast-fashion calendar; it trended on Instagram Reels for weeks.
Acoustically, Studio 01 is a rare hybrid: catwalk doubles as resonant chamber. When the overhead grilles slide apart, light wells from a skylight originally meant for draping sessions bounce harmonic frequencies, letting dancers test kinetic hemlines to sub-40 Hz sine waves. An adjoining vinyl barter shelf allows students to leave old Bollywood LPs in exchange for fashion-tech research journals; stacks overflow with Swar Samrat Talas and Sufjan Stevens in equal measure.
Above all, AIFT sanctifies interdisciplinary friction. Composition majors quote Alexander McQueen’s “It’s a new dawn” while sampling vogue balls. Fashion historians cite Brian Eno on ambience to defend pleated silhouettes that expand like envelopes of pink noise. Even security guards know to pause when the red “recording” bulb glows, letting passing garment trolleys glide like ghost notes.
To the outside world, AIFT stitches clothes; but beneath its catwalks, it records the sound those clothes might make if they could sing.
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- Published: August 17, 2025
