Smooth Sailing

National Institute of Design faculty and designer Anuj Sharma,37,is an unconventional man. To many people in fashion,the Ahmedabad-based designer is the bearded guy in a T-shirt and scruffy shoes who offers you Button Masala,a line of imaginative garments that does not require either a factory or an army of craftsmen and can be unbuttoned and rebuttoned for various uses. Recently,he was invited to the World Economic Forum,Davos,for a discussion on how the “constraint of having one tailor is an advantage”. “The point put across was how thinking small can bring about equal amounts of revenue and happiness. For the past four years,I have been working with one tailor and churning out my collections. Also,I am adding more dimensions to fashion and trying to go beyond the idea of creating clothes for the runway,” says Sharma. His parallel fashion universe is about designing clothes for theatre or building a raft with plastic sheets and rubber-bands. “Right now it is more like a floating bed. It is the kind of thing which is not easily available in the market and is useful in times of flood,” he laughs. The designer has decided to give the upcoming Lakme Fashion Week in March a miss. “Fashion has become more about entertainment than creative output. It gives some people the advantage of being better known,which for me is taken care of now,” he says.