Nov 19, 2013 2 min read Balsam Fir

Designers Make Scarves in the Name of Brooklyn

Brooklyn Block — Sanksshep Mahendra and Namrata Vansadia studied architecture design and communication design respectively in the grad program at Pratt Institute. (Photo courtesy of Sanksshep Mahendra)

Gray, pink, a little bit of mauve and some brown. These are the colors of Fort Greene, according to Sanksshep Mahendra and Namrata Vansadia, founders of the online store The Brooklyn Block, which sells scarves named for different neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn.

The two, who met while studying design at Pratt Institute, take a unique approach to clothing design. Instead of projecting their own idea of a neighborhood’s color scheme onto a scarf, they let the streets of Brooklyn speak for themselves.

“The way it works is that first we take a video of the neighborhood,” said Mahendra, 30.

They focus on iconic images of a neighborhood. With DUMBO, he said, they shot video of the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge Park. With Fort Greene, he and Vansadia walked outside their apartment on the corner of DeKalb Avenue and Washington Avenue and shot scenes from there.

“Once we process that video, we process it in code and generate a specific color pattern,” Mahendra said. “Then that pattern can be printed onto scarves. That makes it very specific to that neighborhood.”

The hues, Mahendra said, also vary with season. They don’t usually shoot in winter because the colors tend toward gray and white.

“If you look at the Fort Greene scarf, you’ll see there is a pink section in the scarf because the video was taken during spring,” said Mahendra. “The pink colors are flora in the neighborhood during springtime.”

The process of breaking down images into bars of color stacked atop one another could just as well be done with photographs, but Mahendra said their decision to use video is a conscious one.

“We chose video to capture every moving element,” he said. “Neighborhoods are not static, they are moving. “[Vansadia and I] don’t think it’s best to capture it static, but to capture it while it’s moving.”

In addition to the Fort Greene and DUMBO scarves, Mahendra and Vansadia have made a Red Hook scarf, plus two scarves representing the DeKalb Market on Willoughby Street at Flatbush Avenue Extension. Soon, said Mahendra, he and his partner hope to expand across the country.

“In the future we plan to go and take more videos of other neighborhoods,” he said. “Right now, we’re focusing on Brooklyn, and then to Manhattan and then each city in the U.S.”