My Favourite Brand
Maharishi
Maharishi is a brand with diverse influence, with a dual representation of both Western and Eastern cultures, stemming from the founder Hardy Blechman’s Eastern roots and his time growing up in England. The brand can stand out due to the Japanese style Yōkai drawings of mythical creatures often embroidered into pieces, often used with colours reflecting or opposing the material they are sewn upon.
Regarding material, Maharishi uses high-quality fabrics such as nylon and organic cotton. Therefore, some can be unsustainable, yet due to the constant blending of materials such as recycled polycotton, the brand can sustain the identity that they are moving forward with the planet in mind, which is essential today.
Due to this cultural influence, the brand’s shapes have a wide variety, allowing it to be more open to different styles and body types. For example, in terms of trousers, the brand has multiple shapes ranging from straight fit around the ankles to wide-leg snow pants, which can be adjusted as much as one could want. This is interesting because some of their pieces can be worn in multiple ways depending on your shoes, for example, and how you would like the trousers to fall over the shoe. Aside from the clothing, the aesthetic within the headquarters shop of Maharishi in Soho is a piece of art itself; the mezzanine style of floors allows for more space and, therefore, allows more to be visible and with a core view of military colours of khaki the store blends nicely together with the occasional pop of bright colours making it visually stimulating. The store itself has created a space that very accurately sets the stage for the clothing.
Any Brand needs to be able to have recognisable features which Maharishi does through its embroidery and camouflage. However it also needs to get across its point with graphics and Typography, which it does by using simplistic bold font; this works well with its military theme as it wastes no time on getting information across. This simplistic font is necessary, though, as the brand stems from its pacifist military view, keeping the font relaxed and straightforward tones down what people could look at as aggressive. The pacifist Military use is one of the most interesting aspects of the brand as they use camo without the interest in the fighting of war, but from the idea that most modern-day pieces of clothing were made In war times, such as the first t-shirt made in the Spanish-American war. This reflection into the past and gratitude for it makes the brand so interesting as it gives an ode to the past and uses it to create a new future.