Feminist Desi Pop Artist Maria Qamar is Launching a New Fashion Line

Already considered an Instagram sensation whose art has been endorsed by the likes of actress Mindy Kaling in her TV show The Mindy Project, Toronto-based artist Maria Qamar has amassed a large following since her first posts of pop art-tinged drawings in 2015. On Instagram, she goes by the name Hatecopy—a reference indicating her feelings for her former job as a copywriter in the advertising industry. Qamar’s work has spanned from murals to menu designs for restaurants in various North American cities and has been sold internationally at exhibitions in Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, and London, with her first solo show, Fraaaandship! (2019), at Richard Taittinger Gallery in New York having brought her further visibility as a young artist coming from an Instagram background.   

With a witty satirical take on her Desi roots, Qamar’s colorful and comic-like creations combine elements of feminism intermingled with South Asian and modern pop culture. “I don’t want to shaadi (wedding)…I just want to party!” says a Desi woman in one of Maria’s paintings. Themes surrounding the artist’s experiences with racism, body shaming, classism, patriarchy, and immigration are all skillfully represented through a visual language in which Indian soap operas meet Roy Lichtenstein-esque pop art.

Much like an Andy Warhol of our days, Qamar has transposed her art also into merchandise and hand-made objects, designing an apparel line of tees, hoodies, and pj’s along with a humorous, illustrated book titled Trust No Aunty (2017) and other accessories such as poster prints, totes, and plates, all available to shop on her website. Now, after a period of standstill dictated by the pandemic, Qamar is ready to resume her plans to launch a fun, unisex fashion line featuring silk slip dresses, blazers, scarves, oversized shirts, and more, all under her artistic trademark. Here, L’OFFICIEL sits down with the Canadian artist to learn everything about her upcoming launch.

L’OFFICIEL: What made you want to branch out into fashion? 

Maria Qamar: I actually used to work with a Toronto-based company a long time ago where we’d sit down with designers and figure out new silhouettes just for us to try something new. We already have merch, like t-shirts and posters, but we kind of wanted something that you can just pair with your outfit regardless of what that is. So we decided to come up with some silk slip dresses, blazers, scarves etc. and then COVID hit and we had to stop making those because the company shut down and it was really sad. But then a year later we were like, Wait, hold on, we can do this, we can do this again.

L’O: Can you tell us about your upcoming collection and what is there to expect?

MQ: This collection is something that we’ve been actually working on for almost over a year and didn’t feel like it was the right time to launch it and now that the pieces are moving, I’m really excited about that. So now we are partnering with a New York-based company and we came up with the right collection. We picked up all the pieces and everything is unisex, with a wide range of sizes and different materials. Everything arrived at my house first and I got to wear every single piece and figure out which looks best. There’s some trench coats, clutches, there’s something for everyone. The pieces will be featured online on hatecopy.com but we are also partnering up with a store called U3 in Toronto which will carry them physically.