President’s Choice

With over 37 years of experience,creating finely cut menswear is a talent that Agasti has nurtured and his client list boasts of the who’s who of Indian politics. “My work transcends the barriers of party allegiances. From Congress and NCP to BJP and Shiv Sena,I make clothes for several politicians now. They comprise a chunk of my clientèle,” says the 62-year-old,who counts the likes of Sharad Pawar,LK Advani,Praful Patel,Vilasrao Deshmukh,Bal Thackeray,Nitish Kumar,Farooq Abdullah and PA Sangma,among his many clients.

But what makes Mumbai-based Agasti’s journey even more fascinating is the fact that it can be traced back to the ’70s when he started out as a designer for costumes of character artistes in Bollywood. One of the first films that he designed for was the Amol Palekar-starrer Apne Paraye,and after that,he went on to design for over 300 films. “In many of these films,I made clothes for the key negative character. I have dressed up Pran,Ajit,Kader Khan and Amrish Puri too. One of my best received creations was Amrish Puri’s Mogambo avatar from Mr India and I still get compliments for it,” he recollects. Within a few years of working for movies,he got offers to design for politicians. “Sushil Kumar Shinde,NKP Salve and Jawaharlal Darda were some of the local names that I started designing for in the early ’80s. From then,there was no looking back as I kept getting introduced to more people from the fraternity and work offers kept pouring in,” he says.

Today with a flourishing business,Agasti concedes that he’s in a happy place. He,however,refused to mention anything about his turnover other than the fact that prices of suits at his Bandra store start at Rs 12,000. Pradyut Guha,personal assistant to the President,is all praises for Agasti. “Pranabda has been wearing suits made by Agasti for a while now,” Guha says.

Ask Agasti about the future and he says that his sons Shantanu and Rahul are going to take his work forward. While Rahul has his own store,Shantanu has been working with him and adding more contemporary lines to his collection. And what about designing for movies? “The last movie I worked on was Welcome where I did Nana Patekar and Paresh Rawal’s clothes. But designing for movies is not the same as before. Today,a stylist sources clothes from luxury brands. So there isn’t much for me to do,” he says. Fashion shows too don’t figure on his agenda as his work leaves with him with little time to do much else. “Politicians today are a lot more conscious of what they wear. They attach a lot of importance to both the fit and the right fabric — be it linen,khadi or wool,” he says.

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