A Love Letter to My Printed Shirts

From the rigid school corridors to the hypercurated world of Instagram, I found freedom-and fragments of self-in a pattern once dismissed as "too much."

- Tanya Chaturvedi

I grew up in a world of starched shirts and straight lines—the kind that didn't allow much room for colour.

At my school in New Delhi, where I spent most of my childhood, discipline wasn't just a value; it was an aesthetic. Crisp uniforms, buzz cuts, the monotony of beige classrooms—everything whispered conformity. But somewhere beneath the khaki and regulation polish, I was already dreaming in colour. I didn't know it yet, but my insurgency would one day take the shape of a shirt—bright and unapologetically floral.

At fifteen, I was chubby, reserved, and hungry—not just for food (though the samosas outside the school gate were a daily temptation) but for self-expression. I didn't have the language yet for who I was—a boy who liked boys—but I knew I wanted to feel beautiful, not just acceptable. And that feeling, that flicker of self-affirmation, arrived one day in the form of an oversized Anokhi shirt I found at their flagship store in Khan Market. It was loose, soft, with hand-blocked flowers bathed in hues of indigo, violet, and sky blue, which seemed to hum under the sunlight. It felt like a secret—my way of saying to the world, “I'm here, even if you don't see me yet.”