Anuj Sharma: Fashion Designer & Founder of Button Masala Technique

Sustainable Design- The Future of Fashion

Anuj Sharma was born in Rajasthan and went on to study post-graduation studies in Apparel Design at the renowned design school, National Institute of Design (NID), India and a Masters in High-performance Sportswear Design at the University of Derby, UK, for which he was awarded the Charles Wallice India trust scholarship in 2002.

Anuj Sharma entered into fashion with his debut collection called Sunday Market in 2007, at Lakme fashion week, Mumbai. He showed many collections and slowly got into innovation in the field of design.

Anuj Sharma has come up with a unique method to construct clothes without any machine, tools or stitch technique. It is titled Button Masala. The method has led to the Button Masala collection, which has been shown internationally for e.g. as part of the travelling exhibition Connecting Concepts by Dutch design DFA to Netherlands, and he was also a part of the exhibition Bliss at the Taiwan design expo 2011. Anuj was also the first designer to be invited to give a TED talk on the method of his button masala collection in TED x Delhi.

About Button Masala:

It is a simple joinery system, which replaces sewing from the clothing or home furnishing. The technique involves only buttons and rubber bands. It is pretty much like tie and dye technique but done with rubber bands. Button masala is a very quick construction method, possibly the cheapest in the world and the greenest for the environment. Each product can be recycled and restructured by simply removing the buttons and putting them in another place. The technique is also used to make carpets, bags, jewelry, shoes and many other useful products. What is nice is that that everyone can use the technique. The technique is easy to be taught and is an open source. It’s already been taught to almost 20000 people across countries.