Behind our 2025 Design: In Conversation with Mahin Hussain

Catching up with Mahin at Wimbledon’s 21 Grams, she is similarly colourful: wearing bright pink lipstick, with matching nails, phone case, and a pink flower pinned to her jacket. Warm and smiley, she stands at odds with the cold October afternoon.

Mahin began her career as a textile designer in Karachi, Pakistan, the city where she is from and lived for 38 years. After her degree in textile design, she briefly worked in a textile mill: “You basically make patterns for clothes, because in Pakistan the climate is hot, so that’s a big industry.”

However, Mahin knew even then that she wanted to do something different, and after three months she moved to the UK to study accessory design at the London College of Fashion. When she went back home, she became a bag designer: “Pakistan produces leather- it’s the raw material that is available to us. All the colours that I ever saw were very muted blacks and greys and navies, and I felt like I really wanted to inject some personality and colour. So, I started making flamboyant and very bold and graphic bags.”

These bags were revolutionary in Pakistan, where most accessories were imported. However, Mahin went further, using them as a “blank canvas” and showcasing ideas such as female empowerment and creating Election Totes.

Mahin doesn’t “fit into any box… I don’t like being part of the crowd; I feel like you have to rise above it.”

In the UK, Mahin’s work is rebellious because its vivid colours stand in contrast to the grey hues of London and Aberdeen, where she lived for three years during Covid. “Aberdeen has a very unique kind of personality that I find, even architecturally, is literally so grey, [but] it was the place where I started creating again. Covid was a time when you were feeling very alone and isolated… I think I missed home so much there.”

Despite living in a creative household – her dad was an art collector and her mum loved to draw – Mahin did not start creating at five or six like many artists. Instead, she spent her time “absorbing.”

“I think the way I stay connected to Pakistan is by ensuring that I take that flavour and everything that I grew up with – from the colours around us to a rich Pakistani textile history, our culture… everything’s very loud and really out there.”

When she first showed her art at a Christmas market in Aberdeen, she recalls with a laugh, the traditional minimalistic Scottish stalls made her prints seem “just like a slap in your face.”

She finds that nostalgia creeps into her prints, including childhood memories of growing up in Pakistan: “When I moved here, one of the first few prints I did was of a rooster. Growing up, our neighbours had one. Every morning at the crack of dawn, the sound would come through the window. When someone comes and sees my work, it’s almost like a little window into the experiences I’ve had, and somehow connecting people through that art.”

It is not only memories that inspire her prints, but also an archive of photos. She returns to Karachi almost every year with her family and captures “some colour that popped out, some texture that I liked or something interesting that I saw in that moment, and then I use that as material to draw from.”

She describes her Pakistani roots as her “great tool”, but she is also not afraid to stray from tradition, blending bright Pakistani imagery with the boldness of 1960s flower power to “make it pop and do a modern take on it.”

This blending of cultures is partly why Mahin was excited when Festival Director, Fiona Razvi, approached her to commission a piece: “it’s this incredible festival, but also, I felt like Wimbledon is my home in the UK and it’s like a little community.” She is proud that her young kids point out the posters to her on the street and understand the Pakistani influence.

Gola Ganda – named after a Pakistani sweet made of crushed ice and coloured syrups – is a taste of Pakistan in Wimbledon. Mahin explains, “It had to be a bright artwork. We live in spaces that are usually bare or white, so I really wanted it to be a piece that would instantly pop and really be striking.

It is full of details, inspired by the architecture in Lahore – one of BookFest’s global partnerships – where Mahin was born. “When someone looks at my artwork, I want their eyes to harmoniously travel… like a discovery where you find different things that will draw you in. I like mixing the bright hues with a slightly surprising hue, but it’s all harmonious. I see it like a jigsaw puzzle.”

“People underestimate the sheer power that colour has,” she continues, “We have busy lives and everyone’s going through something or the other. I have a pink sofa! Why shouldn’t we? I want someone to look at my work and I want them to feel just joy. Art is all about emotion, so it is the ultimate litmus test that you should feel. And also just to have fun!”

By Samara Watts