Samudra’s surf collection channels India.
Hawaii and India flow into each other in Samudra’s evocative designs
On any given morning, you can find Oahu fashion designer Jennifer Binney watching the sunrise from the front deck of her family’s idyllic Lanikai beach house, hand-built by her husband, Peter, with plywood, cinder block and wide-open windows. During these contemplative moments, before her daughter, Rella, 11, and son, Kaiwa, 4, start stirring, Binney is usually dreaming about India.
The former jewelry designer, who first visited the subcontinent in 2000, started her fashion company, Samudra, six years ago with a few oversize canvas pouches emblazoned with a digital tropical print. The images came from her lens or those of collaborators, including her mother, artist Ja Soon Kim. The balmy graphics — think swaying palm trees, surfers catching swells and close-ups of ferns — have become the brand’s signature, embellishing gauzy swimsuit coverups, cotton and silk caftans and cotton voile pareos.
India’s influence can be found in the designs’ highly
saturated, sometimes neon, colors. “Samudra means ‘confluence’ in Sanskrit,” explains Binney, 44. “My brand is a union of Hawaii and India.”
The Maui native notes that
the title of her recent collection, Surf Jaipur, is ironic, considering that Jaipur, the biggest city in the northern state of Rajasthan, is squarely located in what some have
called an inhospitable desert. But, as with most artists, Binney’s inspirations are not always literal.
“In this case, ‘surf’ is about how I navigate the unknown in India,” she says. “I just ride the wave of whatever is going to happen while I’m there.”
This in-the-moment approach did not always come naturally. On Binney’s first visit to India, a kind of sensory overload engulfed her, not unusual for the inaugural sojourns of Westerners. “I really didn’t like it. I got sick. I felt like I was in over my head,” she admits.
But a decade later, when a resort-retail company she was working for decided to send her back on a mission to find emerging designers, Binney had what she calls “a life-changing experience.” She befriended the late owner of Jaipur’s famed Gem Palace, Munnu Kasliwal, a jeweler of international renown.
“Though he lived an opulent life, he took the time to show me the real India, his India,” says Binney. “He taught me to see the beauty beyond the grunge and pov-
“My brand is a unique union of Hawaii and India.” Jennifer Binney