Sabyasachi Mukherjee opened Amazon India Couture Week 2015 at Taj Palace New Delhi on Tuesday with a show was set around a dark, dilapidated building that seemed haunted by the ghost of a World War II bombing expedition.
Tattered reams hung around backlit windows. Mukherjee’s collection was called Bater, which is the Hindi word for quail.
“My collection is inspired by the colours of the bater — the grey, beige and ivory,” Mukherjee told media after the show. “It represents resilience, the gothic.”
The show started with models walking the ramp in heavily embroidered in gold zardozi midnight blue, grey and black silk sherwanis and bandh gala (collarless) jackets paired with embellished churidars (drainpipe trousers) and straight trousers in shades of ivory.
The ladies dressed in gold-embroidered grey tulle in designs ranging from short slip dresses to gowns, to saris and gowns cut as saris, and flowing lehngas. These were paired with sequined and embroidered capes or long jackets that trailed, paired with skyscraper Christian Louboutin heels, of which I caught rare glimpses from the place I was seated.
The gentlemen too wore the famous French designer’s red-lacquer-soled shoes, often in shiny gold, and gold and black. The colours moved from greys and blacks to ivory and khaki, this time embellished in thread work — Kashmiri and Parsi embroidery. The show closed with a blood-red set paired with gunmetal coloured embroidery.
“[We’ve used] very, very fine embroidery from different parts of India. It is all hand embroidery — zardozi, kajri, bandhani, Kashmiri and Parsi — all sorts of old embroidery but interpreted in a modern way. I wanted to do something flowing, voluminous, to create something that was modern, eccentric fabric,” the 41-year-old designer continued.
Collaborating with Mukherjee was only because he “bonded” with the Indian designer, Louboutin told tabloid!, talking of what he felt about couture in India.
“It is absolutely perfect, it is the way [couture] is. It is the same as in my country. Even the weather was perfect. It was only a pleasure and nothing, nothing, nothing else,” Louboutin said. “Also for me, when I work with someone I have to bond personally with the person. I’m very fully happy. We can sleep now”.
“Amazing” was all people said, as they walked out of the hall some 30 minutes later. Yet it was one young model who summed it up. “Sabyasachi’s collection just fits,” said Anirudh Charkravarthi who was walking the ramp for the designer for the first time. “It is representative of the next design trend in India”.
Amazon India Couture Week runs until August 2 and will have leading designers such as Manish Malhotra, Rohit Bal, Manav Gangwani, Anju Modi and Rahul Mishra presenting their couture collections.
