Picture Perfect

What makes the relationship symbiotic is that for the international label,it’s a chance to dig their heels into the Indian luxury market. “If there are 300 women in India who know couture and can afford a Leiber,they’re probably already clients of mine,” says Varma candidly.

And considering that Leiber minaudieres and evening bags have,for some time,been to the red carpet what a vodka martini is to James Bond,who would he want walking the red carpet holding his clutch? The designer gives the matter some thought before picking Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep for possessing the twin virtues of beauty and brains for as he says,“I am hugely turned on by intelligence.”

We stop short outside Omega where Varma’s gaze fixes on a Venetian,crystal chandelier which he finds “breathtakingly awesome”. No tepid,utilitarian chic for this designer who’s all about unbridled opulence. Or so testified his models at the India Couture Week clad in swags of rich velvet,scalloped hemlines and perky,velvet turbans adorned with feathers and plumes. Each of the turbans on his 54 models was wrapped by the designer himself. He also placed the feathers because he wanted them tilted at just such an angle.

“Sadly I suffer from a disease called perfectionism,” says Varma while fingering the lapels of a Zodiac jacket less with the speculative look of a buyer than the critical gaze of a voyeur. He recounts how an hour before his show at India Couture Week,he clambered up the sets to drape vines on the stage to recreate the feel of La Belle Epoche. “I was up there with a shotgun in my hands when my shorts started falling off. The stage manager interpreted it as the cue for me to come down and get dressed for the show,” laughs Varma. Whoa. That’s taking perfectionism to the stripping end of the spectrum.

But then again,as he says,he’s no madcap fashionista with an arsenal of eccentricities. He’s just a designer who knows what he wants.