BRIGHT SIDE
One look at Benjamin Garg’s rich hues should nix your neutrals obsession, writes Clare Press.
NO WALLFLOWERS HERE. Benjamin Garg’s work is an explosion of volume and colour: orange; the weathered ochre of ancient Rajasthani castles; summer-sky blue. “For me, these colours evoke joy,” says the designer. Taking those hues, the sari’s drape and the energy of Indian classical dance as his starting points, Garg has produced something rooted in the past but committed to the future.
His process begins on the mannequin, gathering, pleating, knotting, then moves to a computer, where he Photoshops his dreamy silhouettes before creating his patterns. One skirt might take as much as 20 metres of fine pleated, wrinkled cotton, yet come across light as fairy floss. The wearer “must feel free, relaxed with continuous circulation of air”, he says.
Melbourne-based Garg, who hails from the village of Mudki in the Indian state of Punjab, was a standout graduate from RMIT’s Masters of Fashion program last year. “I was the kid who wanted to play with fabric,” he says, recalling boyhood days spent draping and gluing rudimentary outfits for himself and, when they’d let him, the family’s housekeepers. He upcycled his mother’s old clothes, and once he fashioned a frock for a doll from an unwanted scrap of brown fleece fabric.
These days he’s sourcing more refined materials. Garg’s obsession is Kota doria, a tradition of hand-loomed translucent muslins once
supported by royal patronage. “This desert fabric is produced in towns and villages in and around Kota city [in south-eastern Rajasthan]. Kota saris are the lightest cotton saris available in India,” he says, explaining that the weaves vary according to yarn gauges, while the different fine check patterns are known as khat.
There’s something of the spiritual in its making, he says. “These handicrafts are made with blossomed heart and peace of mind, which is equivalent to meditation. These talented artisan hands work to give: [they] don’t demand much in return, [they] just want you to be at peace. That’s the same energy I want to embed in my garments, and to give to the wearer.”
Garg makes to order, for sustainability reasons as well as practical ones. He talks of slow fashion and reconnection, and says he’s driven, as a designer, “by the idea of filling positive energy where it has been lost in this digital, industrialised age”. His work is indeed energetic. There’s an expansive freshness to it, something like an Indian version of Molly Goddard. Garg’s clothes, with their kinetic grace and lightness, literally speak volumes. “Fashion is the perfect voice for me to communicate through,” he says. “I am not much of a talker.”