Designer Ashish Sonis 20 years retrospective,a fashion-art exhibition creates white noise to be seen and heard Ashish Soni wears his optimism well. Among everything up for display at his 20 years in fashion retrospective clothes,memories,reflections,plans it is his positivism that you want to order to your size. What does this cheer cost? Two decades of persistence with other realities that also come in twos. Needle and thread,craft and textile,India and abroad,black and white,creativity and commerce. The latter pair is befuddling for most designers. A late 80s NIFT graduate (from its second batch) and the first Rohit Bal intern ever,Soni at 41,is among those designers who have survived two recessions and must wade through a fickle,local market that holds its head in its hands wondering what to buy and where. The biggest lesson of these two decades is how to make design commercially successful. But it is within the scope of fashion that I have been able to do a lot of things says Soni. On the opening night of his retrospective at The Aman,New Delhi,he looked like a spitting image of his sharp-suited male mannequins,who,of course,cant manage his smile. Very few people know that in the 90s,most of my income came from textile projects for the government of India, he recalls,talking about working with bamboo,glass and Chanderi fabric among other crafts of rural India. Absolut Soni,(the booze brand is the sponsor of this arty extravaganza),then,is an arty collage with mannequins dressed in Ashish Soni pret and couture,sculptures,multi-media installations,its and bits from past collections,an interpretation of the Absolut vodka bottle,even a rolling film with oft-heard voices from the fashion industry. Lot of white. Lot of black. Lot of black and white. Sonis press release terms it excessive minimalism. Turn the words on their head to call it minimalist excess. Both stick. Soni has had a white fixation for years. White is my comfort zone,an inherent attraction but as my signature,it only started becoming recognisable in the last seven years, he says. The obvious wrangle about his brand is he a more relevant menswear designer or a ladies tailor of merit gets sorted along the way as you realise that customers who return to Soni have put concerns about gender-specific tailoring aside. They look for cut,class,and clarity. Soni prides himself on being one of the first Indian designers to show at New York fashion week but,it was his job at London as chief designer at Vanessa G,a British brand that helped him,as he says,appreciate finesse and quality control. I do what I do because of quality control,not arrogance, he says adding that he has stuck to his guns,(read never made a lehnga-choli and says an emphatic no to bling-blazing design projects) despite the cookie crumbling in Western markets after 2008. This retrospective is also an indication that I want to create experiential design in the future,be it a home,a hotel,a wedding,a 4D presentation, he says. If Soni really manages to do what he envisions,his white noise may give Indian fashion a new sound. Absolut Soni is on at The Aman,New Delhi till Feb 29
