“I hate Diet Prada,” says Anita Chhiba, to my surprise. She is the 32-year-old founder of the spin-off Instagram community Diet Paratha, which champions South Asian creative talent globally. “I just think cancel culture is the devil. My whole concept is flipping the script from cancellation to celebration.”
For those unaware, Diet Prada is an Instagram page with 3.3 million followers, and acts as a fashion industry watchdog by calling out brands and celebrities for bad behaviour and copying each other’s designs. Most famously, it caused the cancellation of Dolce & Gabbana’s 2018 Shanghai fashion show by publishing racist text messages allegedly sent by co-designer Stefano Gabbana.
But Chhiba, who is New Zealand-born of Gujarati Indian descent, is not about aggression. Her 2017-founded counter-site, whose flippant name swaps the Italian brand for traditional South Asian flatbread, is a visually rich moodboard, introducing often little-known artists, designers, models and musicians to its 44.4k-strong fanbase.
Diet Paratha is scoured by US Vogue as a talent resource, hosts live events with Soho House, and runs a Family Tree Mentorship scheme which pairs individuals and established brands with industry figures to bolster the community. “I hadn’t seen a platform that showcased brown people in a way that wasn’t stereotypical. So often we are associated with arranged marriages, owning corner stores, the Taj Mahal, saris and Bend It Like Beckham,” Chhiba says, exasperated over Zoom from her well-polished east London home.
“Really, it’s like: we’ve had enough, we’re out here, we want to be seen, we want to be heard, respected and paid. And so treat us as such,” she says.
These are the foundations of Diet Paratha’s partnership with whisky brand Johnnie Walker, which debuted this month by supporting new rounds of mentoring. Bridgerton’s Simone Ashley is the face of Johnnie Walker’s new ‘Bold Steps’ campaign, whose leading role in the Netflix drama was “such a huge win for the culture”, Chhiba beams. The actress stars in a motivating short film for the project, where she speaks directly to camera: “It’s not often we are told we’re brown and brilliant and to live out our dreams.”
Chhiba gets many collaboration offers — and has worked with Burberry, Gucci and Byredo in the past — but is sceptical about pursuing them. “Meaningful support is so rare with brands — you almost never see it,” she says. “It’s always heavily rooted in some kind of topical moment like Diwali or South Asian heritage month, which literally only popped up like three years ago.”
But even this represents a positive cultural shift, Chhiba is quick to recognise. “In London definitely, there’s a hyper visibility that South Asians seem to be receiving. There’s many reasons for that. Diet Paratha, yes, but also Daytimers and Dialled In,” she says, of the South Asian-focused art collective and London music festival respectively.
In the media too, I flag. On newsstands when we speak, Indian actress Priyanka Chopra is on the cover of British Vogue, while Akshata Murty, the Indian wife of the UK’s first South Asian Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, fronts Tatler. This does not excite Chhiba. “I don’t want to talk about either of those two,” she says. “Because it’s not favourably.”
What is her take on Sunak entering Number 10? “I have opinions on that, of course. We’re not a monolith. We’re not one people. We are a myriad and we are complex. It’s kind of like me saying what are your thoughts on Trump?” she says. Whichever way you look at it, I contend, Sunak’s appointment marks a historic milestone in British politics and for representation of South Asian people in the UK.
She turns to a proverb to explain her stance: “Not all skin folk are kinfolk. We all have different marginalisations affecting us as a people. Some of us face genocide, and some of us have a billion dollars. No one person can represent a community,” she says. For Chhiba, satisfaction comes in the helping of many; chiefly when they do not have the spotlight she thinks they deserve.
Diet Paratha’s ones to watch...
Keerthana Kunath
A photographer who’s rewriting her youth and challenging the rigid heteronormativity she’s grown up with in India. From a young age, Kunnath knew that questioning this would have consequences, but refused to compartmentalise her life and aspirations for the comfort of others.
Leo Kalyan
A British-Pakistani singer, songwriter, and model. An independent artist and songwriter, walking the line between art and activism, Kalyan was one of the first South Asian musicians to publicly come out as gay and non-binary, and is fast becoming one of the most unique musical voices in Britain today.
Furmaan Ahmed
The Central Saint Martins graduate is a multi-disciplinary artist from Glasgow who imagines fantasy universes that reference ancient sites, nature and hybrid futurism to create landscapes and experiences that feel like glitches in reality.
