Indian designers are making a splash in fashion capitals globally, says Arundhati Basu
Vibrant colours are Alpana Bawa’s forte, who warns that no one can look inconspicuous in her creations. Pix by Rupinder Sharma
If Fashion is the catchword, international fashion more so, a brigade of Indian couturiers is pulling out all the stops to grab their moment in the sun. Setting up shop in the fashion capitals of the world, they are cracking the international fashion circuit before they turn their eyes homewards.
In the heart of New York, Naeem Khan is making waves with his eponymous label that’s known for its red-carpet gowns while Alpana Bawa has successfully carved a niche for herself with her kitschy appeal.
Roam the streets of Paris and Milan and you might bump into Sanchita Ajjampur, who divides her time between the two cities. And in Milan you may even encounter the young designer team of Narresh and Shrivan in their studio that’s tucked away in a fashionable street.
The roll call continues. There’s Sita de Vesci, the London-based resortwear designer, and Ashish Gupta who’s been the blue-eyed boy of London’s fashion scene since 2004 when his name began doing the rounds of the fashion world.
In this cut-throat and fickle world of fashion, each of the designers has his or her signature style of dressing in place. Mumbai-bred Naeem Khan has made a splash of sorts in the New York fashion scene with cocktail dresses and gowns that are a hit with royalty including Queen Noor of Jordan and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan.
Sanchita Ajjampur’s ensembles are strong on Indian craftsmanship with an Italian ‘touch-friendly’ sensibility
His client profile reads like a who’s who list: model and cookbook author Padma Lakshmi, singers Beyoncé and Carrie Underwood, actresses Eva Longoria and Alicia Keys. By the way, his designerwear comes with equally exclusive prices ranging from $1,500 to $25,000 (that would be between Rs 74,331 and Rs 12,38,850).
And Khan lives a charmed and flamboyant life. He dines and entertains the celebrities he dresses, often taking part in charity events. “Fashion is not just about dressing the rich. To understand them, you have to live the life they do,” he says.
Meanwhile if you come across Alpana Bawa’s East 1st Street store in NY City, you will no doubt be dazzled by the array of colours she puts on the racks. With her salt-pepper hair cropped close to her scalp in a crew-cut style, the 40-year-old designer dresses up in perky outfits and is nonchalant about fame and its trappings.
She launched her label in New York in the late ’80s and today her ensembles are priced upwards of $70 (Rs 3,475) for a scarf and goes upto $1,200 (Rs 59,334) for cashmere coats. Her inspiration, she says, happens to be art — with different seasons often reflecting different colour palettes and reflection of works of artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd.
Another designer who likes to fall back on art is Sanchita Ajjampur who started as a decorative design consultant to designer labels like Alexander McQueen, Armani, Diesel, Gucci, Lanvin, Givenchy and Lacroix. In 2004, she launched her fashion label ‘Sanchita’, under the umbrella of a company called Sanfab, which she launched in Bangalore in 2000 along with her finance whiz brother.
“I am a global nomad. My clothes retain the strongest elements of the three cultures — French, Italian and Indian — that I have known intensively,” says the designer who was born in Mumbai before she moved to Europe at the age of three. She grew up in Vienna and England and later studied in Paris and Italy.
Others like Sita de Vesci have decided to narrow it down further. Vesci specialises in resortwear that she started with in 2004 in London and made it versatile enough for her pieces to be worn at daytime by the sea/pool and at fancy dos in the evening. Similarly, Narresh and Shrivan, the 20-something designers from NIFT, Delhi, who launched their label in 2008 in Cannes, have set parameters for themselves in the itsy bitsy world of beachwear.
Naeem Khan has made a splash in the New York fashion scene with his cocktail dresses and gowns; (below) Narresh and Shrivan are best known for their stitch-free bikinis
These designers stand out by virtue of their stitch-free bikinis. Sounds absurd? “Not really. We have been using an Italian fabric that is made by bonding tapes — a technology that has so far been used only by brands such as Armani Prive, Hugo Boss and La Perla,” says Narresh. The price tag therefore starts at Rs 10,000.
The designers believe that their lifestyles opened the doors to where they find themselves right now. Vesci’s label, for instance, arose out of her ‘soft spot’ for beach holidays. Even today most summers are spent with her family on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, and whenever in India, she takes off for Goa.
In the late ’70s, Khan arrived in New York from Mumbai to study fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), but instead ended up apprenticing with American designer Halston, forgoing the FIT course completely.
“I was already comfortable working with sequins, beading and embroidery (his father and grandfather were designers for the royalty in India). It was a case of learning to take that luxury and translating it into simple forms. This was also the time I met actress Liza Minnelli and artist Andy Warhol who walked into Halston’s. All of which had an impact on me,” says Khan, who opened a small studio on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in 1981 and started his own label named after his mother, Riazee.
In 2003, he launched the label Naeem Khan and debuted at the Olympus Fashion Week two years later. Now he is a bankable name at 180 stores across the globe including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus.
Resortwear from Sita de Vesci is all about wearability; (below) a Sita de Vesci Gecko clutch that’s favoured by actor and socialite Twinkle Khanna
Art played a role in the designs of Bawa and Ajjampur as well, even though both have very different design sensibilities. Bawa’s is a youthful style though admittedly loud and much preferred by her artist and musician friends. “Well, you cannot hide in my clothes,” she says with a twinkle. Not surprisingly, hers is the downtown and bohemian life in NY City and she loves to spend time in museums and theatres or simply by taking off to the country.
Ajjampur’s upbringing was an education of sorts. Her mother, a former model, had a wardrobe that was a revelation what with its fine Egyptian cottons, satins, French georgettes, silks and Chantilly laces.
“My grandfather was in Egypt at some point and he was neighbours with the Egyptian royalty. I was exposed to all that along with generous doses of visiting museums, admiring art and sculpture,” she says.
The Indian connection, however, remains strong in all. Red-carpet glamour might be crucial to the Naeem Khan tag, but it juxtaposes the Indian craftsmanship of embroidering and beading with clean Western lines. He notes: “The fabrics are exclusively created in my father’s factories in Mumbai.”
On the other hand, Ashish Gupta — who has had actors and musicians including Jerry Hall, Keira Knightley, Kelly Osborne, Elizabeth Jagger, Mena Suvari, Sophie Ellis Baxter, Sharon Stone and Bryan Adams wearing him — incorporates everything from zardozi to beadwork, sequins and knitting in his collections.
While Khan says he is yet to contemplate a move to India, others have already taken a step back home. Ajjampur, who showed on the Indian fashion week ramps starting with her Spring/Summer 2007 collections, has a flagship store at The Leela Palace Hotel in Bangalore and distributes her collection in 10 stores in India. Internationally, she is available in Paris, Milan and Dusseldorf.
Vesci too put up a stall this year at the Delhi Fashion Week. She says: “It brought me into contact with a possible market in India for so far all my sales have been to top department stores in the West such as Harrods in London.”
Realising the potential of India as a beachwear market, especially after they met demands at Cannes for stones such as topaz, onyx and amethyst to be merged with beachwear, Narresh and Shrivan, too have decided to shift their studio from Milan to Delhi. They have already set up a small studio in the suburbs of Delhi. They are retailing at the moment only in Vancouver and Cannes.
The times may not be good with recession casting its gloomy shadow, but the designers are all set to ignore it. If anything, they seem to be bent upon fine-tuning their select and luxurious pieces. According to Khan, there has been no dip in his sales. “Luckily for me, it has been at par with last year’s sales,” he says. His price tags remain the same.
Meanwhile sitting in the cool white interiors of her Delhi store in the Garden of Five Senses that she set up in 2007, Bawa is content with the fact that she has been downsizing. “It seems my decision to shut my second store in Soho two years back came at the right time. I might have otherwise been left popping pills,” she says. Bawa has also started raising the prices for her Spring/Summer 2009 collection in New York, something that is not yet deterring her regular customers.
Narresh too shrugs off all the R-talk. He adds: “For us, design is an indulgence. That translates into not being bothered by what’s happening around us.”
Vibrant colours are Alpana Bawa’s forte, who warns that no one can look inconspicuous in her creations. Pix by Rupinder Sharma
If Fashion is the catchword, international fashion more so, a brigade of Indian couturiers is pulling out all the stops to grab their moment in the sun. Setting up shop in the fashion capitals of the world, they are cracking the international fashion circuit before they turn their eyes homewards.
In the heart of New York, Naeem Khan is making waves with his eponymous label that’s known for its red-carpet gowns while Alpana Bawa has successfully carved a niche for herself with her kitschy appeal.
Roam the streets of Paris and Milan and you might bump into Sanchita Ajjampur, who divides her time between the two cities. And in Milan you may even encounter the young designer team of Narresh and Shrivan in their studio that’s tucked away in a fashionable street.
The roll call continues. There’s Sita de Vesci, the London-based resortwear designer, and Ashish Gupta who’s been the blue-eyed boy of London’s fashion scene since 2004 when his name began doing the rounds of the fashion world.
In this cut-throat and fickle world of fashion, each of the designers has his or her signature style of dressing in place. Mumbai-bred Naeem Khan has made a splash of sorts in the New York fashion scene with cocktail dresses and gowns that are a hit with royalty including Queen Noor of Jordan and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan.
Sanchita Ajjampur’s ensembles are strong on Indian craftsmanship with an Italian ‘touch-friendly’ sensibility
His client profile reads like a who’s who list: model and cookbook author Padma Lakshmi, singers Beyoncé and Carrie Underwood, actresses Eva Longoria and Alicia Keys. By the way, his designerwear comes with equally exclusive prices ranging from $1,500 to $25,000 (that would be between Rs 74,331 and Rs 12,38,850).
And Khan lives a charmed and flamboyant life. He dines and entertains the celebrities he dresses, often taking part in charity events. “Fashion is not just about dressing the rich. To understand them, you have to live the life they do,” he says.
Meanwhile if you come across Alpana Bawa’s East 1st Street store in NY City, you will no doubt be dazzled by the array of colours she puts on the racks. With her salt-pepper hair cropped close to her scalp in a crew-cut style, the 40-year-old designer dresses up in perky outfits and is nonchalant about fame and its trappings.
She launched her label in New York in the late ’80s and today her ensembles are priced upwards of $70 (Rs 3,475) for a scarf and goes upto $1,200 (Rs 59,334) for cashmere coats. Her inspiration, she says, happens to be art — with different seasons often reflecting different colour palettes and reflection of works of artists like Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd.
Another designer who likes to fall back on art is Sanchita Ajjampur who started as a decorative design consultant to designer labels like Alexander McQueen, Armani, Diesel, Gucci, Lanvin, Givenchy and Lacroix. In 2004, she launched her fashion label ‘Sanchita’, under the umbrella of a company called Sanfab, which she launched in Bangalore in 2000 along with her finance whiz brother.
“I am a global nomad. My clothes retain the strongest elements of the three cultures — French, Italian and Indian — that I have known intensively,” says the designer who was born in Mumbai before she moved to Europe at the age of three. She grew up in Vienna and England and later studied in Paris and Italy.
Others like Sita de Vesci have decided to narrow it down further. Vesci specialises in resortwear that she started with in 2004 in London and made it versatile enough for her pieces to be worn at daytime by the sea/pool and at fancy dos in the evening. Similarly, Narresh and Shrivan, the 20-something designers from NIFT, Delhi, who launched their label in 2008 in Cannes, have set parameters for themselves in the itsy bitsy world of beachwear.
Naeem Khan has made a splash in the New York fashion scene with his cocktail dresses and gowns; (below) Narresh and Shrivan are best known for their stitch-free bikinis
These designers stand out by virtue of their stitch-free bikinis. Sounds absurd? “Not really. We have been using an Italian fabric that is made by bonding tapes — a technology that has so far been used only by brands such as Armani Prive, Hugo Boss and La Perla,” says Narresh. The price tag therefore starts at Rs 10,000.
The designers believe that their lifestyles opened the doors to where they find themselves right now. Vesci’s label, for instance, arose out of her ‘soft spot’ for beach holidays. Even today most summers are spent with her family on the Amalfi Coast in Italy, and whenever in India, she takes off for Goa.
In the late ’70s, Khan arrived in New York from Mumbai to study fashion at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), but instead ended up apprenticing with American designer Halston, forgoing the FIT course completely.
“I was already comfortable working with sequins, beading and embroidery (his father and grandfather were designers for the royalty in India). It was a case of learning to take that luxury and translating it into simple forms. This was also the time I met actress Liza Minnelli and artist Andy Warhol who walked into Halston’s. All of which had an impact on me,” says Khan, who opened a small studio on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills in 1981 and started his own label named after his mother, Riazee.
In 2003, he launched the label Naeem Khan and debuted at the Olympus Fashion Week two years later. Now he is a bankable name at 180 stores across the globe including Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus.
Resortwear from Sita de Vesci is all about wearability; (below) a Sita de Vesci Gecko clutch that’s favoured by actor and socialite Twinkle Khanna
Art played a role in the designs of Bawa and Ajjampur as well, even though both have very different design sensibilities. Bawa’s is a youthful style though admittedly loud and much preferred by her artist and musician friends. “Well, you cannot hide in my clothes,” she says with a twinkle. Not surprisingly, hers is the downtown and bohemian life in NY City and she loves to spend time in museums and theatres or simply by taking off to the country.
Ajjampur’s upbringing was an education of sorts. Her mother, a former model, had a wardrobe that was a revelation what with its fine Egyptian cottons, satins, French georgettes, silks and Chantilly laces.
“My grandfather was in Egypt at some point and he was neighbours with the Egyptian royalty. I was exposed to all that along with generous doses of visiting museums, admiring art and sculpture,” she says.
The Indian connection, however, remains strong in all. Red-carpet glamour might be crucial to the Naeem Khan tag, but it juxtaposes the Indian craftsmanship of embroidering and beading with clean Western lines. He notes: “The fabrics are exclusively created in my father’s factories in Mumbai.”
On the other hand, Ashish Gupta — who has had actors and musicians including Jerry Hall, Keira Knightley, Kelly Osborne, Elizabeth Jagger, Mena Suvari, Sophie Ellis Baxter, Sharon Stone and Bryan Adams wearing him — incorporates everything from zardozi to beadwork, sequins and knitting in his collections.
While Khan says he is yet to contemplate a move to India, others have already taken a step back home. Ajjampur, who showed on the Indian fashion week ramps starting with her Spring/Summer 2007 collections, has a flagship store at The Leela Palace Hotel in Bangalore and distributes her collection in 10 stores in India. Internationally, she is available in Paris, Milan and Dusseldorf.
Vesci too put up a stall this year at the Delhi Fashion Week. She says: “It brought me into contact with a possible market in India for so far all my sales have been to top department stores in the West such as Harrods in London.”
Realising the potential of India as a beachwear market, especially after they met demands at Cannes for stones such as topaz, onyx and amethyst to be merged with beachwear, Narresh and Shrivan, too have decided to shift their studio from Milan to Delhi. They have already set up a small studio in the suburbs of Delhi. They are retailing at the moment only in Vancouver and Cannes.
The times may not be good with recession casting its gloomy shadow, but the designers are all set to ignore it. If anything, they seem to be bent upon fine-tuning their select and luxurious pieces. According to Khan, there has been no dip in his sales. “Luckily for me, it has been at par with last year’s sales,” he says. His price tags remain the same.
Meanwhile sitting in the cool white interiors of her Delhi store in the Garden of Five Senses that she set up in 2007, Bawa is content with the fact that she has been downsizing. “It seems my decision to shut my second store in Soho two years back came at the right time. I might have otherwise been left popping pills,” she says. Bawa has also started raising the prices for her Spring/Summer 2009 collection in New York, something that is not yet deterring her regular customers.
Narresh too shrugs off all the R-talk. He adds: “For us, design is an indulgence. That translates into not being bothered by what’s happening around us.”
The gala Grand Finale of the first of its kind, design based reality show ‘Let’s Design’ by Cotton Council International concluded at Hotel Intercontinental Eros in New Delhi. 
