So who gets your vote for best bridal wear design this season?
The trend, the people, the designers — all you need to know about the most recent edition of India Couture Week. Including who nearly tripped but then picked herself up and sailed through with poise
To celebrate 10 years of India Couture Week (ICW), this year’s edition was actually a seven-day affair instead of the usual five. So now it’s a wellentrenched part of the India fashion calendar. It’s also an event that has received its fair share of flak in the past. Haute Couture literally translated means ‘high sewing’ and couture clothes are all about the art and craft of fashion. The garments, with expensive price tags, are targeted to the fashion elite. In India, we tend to have lavish weddings — so couture has become more about bridal — and that means that commerce overtakes art. In a country known for its craft — very few designers really showed a truly handmade collection — but again that has more to do with cost than creativity. And in this present economy, who can blame fashion designers for thinking of the bottom-line?
That is not to say that the week did not have some stand-out fashion. Here is a pick of the five important moments from India’s most extravagant fashion week, India Couture Week, which concluded last Sunday at Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel.
The modern set (above)
A couture show is about drama, and a set really is a must. Leave being clean and simple to the ready-to-wear shows, couture is extravagant and makes no apologies about it. From Tarun Tahiliani’s beaten gold Kashmiri forest (designed by scenographer Sumant Jayakrishnan) to Monisha Jaising’s Opera staircase, the catwalks at India Couture Week set the stage for the show.
From the minute the Fashion Design Council of India (the industry’s apex body which is the producer of ICW) announced the line-up, it was the Gaurav Gupta show that everyone was waiting for. Known for his fantastical shapes, he marries sculpture with futurism and drape with tailoring, truly of the belief that opposites attract. This designer is setting the agenda for defining ‘India Modern Couture’. In his press release, Gaurav Gupta said, “It’s like Cinderella wore these clothes to a surreal ball and then rediscovered them years later.” The collection was called ‘Moondust’. Ensuring that you knew Gupta wanted these clothes to transport you to another galaxy was the set created by Klove, a Delhi-based lighting boutique studio known for their design installations. You may have seen the work of Klove at the Mumbai airport — their peacock mural is the taking point of the terminal. The boys also show during Dubai Design Week and the installation they created for the Gupta show literally took you to planet GG. Each cluster of giant moondust particles made you feel like you were in the middle of a Tim Burton production.