Ganesha on the Beach

The Personal meets the Pathological

IT had been one of the most anticipated shows of this edition of WIFW,simply because top-lining designer Rajesh Pratap Singh’s ill health deemed him MIA for the past year. The spilling over hall bore testimony to how much he was missed. But Pratap was still in the mood of blink-and-miss; his moonless-night lighting and excessive smoke machinations made his comeback line a bit hard on the eyes.

His parade largely comprised severe cocktail dresses with power shoulders and a spine detail on the back was a bit of him poking fun at his own trouble-weary back. He introduced a new technique called ‘tesselation’,which is playing with the fabric by hand and making Origami-esque hexagons. A wonderful new silhouette that we’ve seen in many shows this season is the bar jacket with teensy shorts. Also lovely were an armour-top,cowl-bottom dress and another digi-printed draped frock. A short crop jacket and a pencil skirt with peplum hem offered romantic relief in this otherwise funereal procession. As were the two incredibly chic fringed dresses that seemed like PVC in all the smoke,but were actually shredded knit.

The finale dresses were especially delicious: metal-woven into jersey to make liquid gold draped dresses. Yes,you could say the collection was fit and fine.

Wendell Rodricks

Songs of the Orient

IT’S easy to take Wendell Rodricks out of Goa,but it’s almost impossible to get the beach state out of its homegrown designer. For this season,Rodricks takes off on a nautical journey from Goa to Shanghai via the Malacca Strait and Macao.

True to his signature,Rodricks presented fluid and body-lengthening silhouettes in the shapes of tunics,lungi trousers,capes and ruffled boleros on Day 1 of the Wills India Fashion Week (WIFW). He opened with a silver-spangled bikini top and a slit skirt,cleverly monikered a new-age kashti,the local drape. The Goan pano bhaju,on which Rodricks has especially written a book,came out in contemporary avatars like a short sleeve. His favourite cuts — the circle and the bias — were omnipresent. The colours were that of an early-morning sea,inspired by a basket of pastel eggs he saw at a market and shared a photograph of.

Most of the show seemed to be filled with things you had seen before. Much of this is because the designer shows too often. But it is also because his signature is so strong,it’s hard for him to steer away from his specialties. Repetition is a double-edged sword.

When you see a male model come out in a powder-blue bandhgala jacket with a white silk waistcoat,white linen trousers and a white georgette lungi draped over it,you realise how hard it is to be simple and spectacular at the same time. And then you thank the lord that some things never change.

James Ferreira

Festival Chic?

FRESH from the noisy Ganeshotsav in Mumbai comes James Ferreira,the ‘Bombay boy’ who lives by the Chowpatty,the beach where raucous crowds immerse the elephant-headed deity in the waters.

Of course his collection would have mired with images of Ganesha,beautifully hand-painted by the brilliant textile painter Bhamini Subramaniam. There were also cherub motifs,from Ferreira’s own ancestry.

He presented an easy-breezy line of summer dresses,mostly in white,with lightly handpainted motifs on them,as handkerchief dresses,Grecian drapes and frocks that seemed to be held together by a pin here and a knot there. There were also a few black-and-white stripes in floor-sweeping maxis. The denouement was an elegant indulgence of lemon gowns with gentle gold-silver embroidery.

A truly elegant presentation from one of our most undervalued and under-reviewed designers ever,despite his very sexy,open-shirted finale dance.