Amit Aggarwal, Rimzim Dadu, Rahul Mishra and Isha Jajodia are creating silhouettes that are minimal, textured and practical

It makes anybody look statuesque with a porcelain-vase finish and a comfortable smoothness on the skin. The red flowing silhouette could be a classic Grecian gown, a dhoti-style sari with Banarasi motifs or simply a space-age body suit with corded sashes and flourishes — each mouldable according to body type and fluid enough to give character to the wearer. Aggarwal has broken through the clutter of wedding couture that has led to a cloned line of Baroque excess — stone-crusted and embroidered lehengas, saris, trains and sherwanis. Instead, he’s created a clean structured line with muted tones, artfully layering them with different repurposed textiles.

“This certainly goes against the idea of Indian fashion. Unfortunately, we identify this country as a giant motif. If there’s no motif in your work, it means you’ve lost the Indian legacy in the Western world,” says the designer, who is readjusting the viewer’s lens. He has literally brought the world home with a cape that can sit as easily on a sari, a gown, a pantsuit or loungewear, elevating each piece without overpowering their individual character. Yet leaving his unique signature.

A new breed of young designers are tired of giving into Western stereotypes of royal grandeur and overdone craftsmanship. They are done with seeking validation. They are elegantly minimal, outrageously textured and effortlessly practical. If Indian fashion has so far been defined by cliches, these designers are breaking nativist barriers and universalising a design philosophy, one where Indianness is as much a strand that blends in with global threads.

If Aggarwal uses polymer from an old discarded plastic bucket, designer Rimzim Dadu binds ultra-thin steel wires with chiffon scraps, taffeta and zardozi for that translucent sheen. Her last collection blended stucco art with jaali designs. Meanwhile, Isha Jajodia blends chikankari and lacework. And Rahul Mishra is reclaiming chintz, the floral and animal motif-printed calico cloth from Golconda that was imitated all over Europe. If earlier designers were too keen to placate Western expectations, this new lot is unabashed about not meeting them and still making the world sit up and take notice.

Aggarwal has been upcycling old saris, influenced as he was by his mother’s collection. His silhouettes followed the grammar of his engineer father’s drawings. But it was the 60-year-old Banarasi sari that actor Priyanka Chopra wore at the launch of the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai that got the eyeballs. The designer had restored a 60-year-old Banarasi sari with silver threads and gold electroplating on silk, strung geometric patches, then pleated and draped the fabric around a metallic bodice. “It’s very easy to say that something is no longer usable, but if you detach itself from the purpose it was originally made for, then you can do a million unimaginable things with it. This is my original story. The lines of couture, in the classical French sense, are blurred in a globalised world. Anything that embodies your spirit and you feel good in, anything that makes you feel it was not made for anyone but you, holds the spirit of couture. It could be something that you pick up off a flea market or something that has been lying in the corner of your wardrobe. As long as it is as fluid as time,” says Aggarwal.

Growing up in a family that exported to French fashion houses, Dadu’s design philosophy was remarkably grounded as she played around with leftover materials and fabric in the basement. “I always wanted to manipulate them and create my own surface and learnt how to join seams of mixed materials, line them, make them tensile and flexible. I was never into textile designing but am always obsessed with the idea of creating newer weaves. That’s the complex artistry. Legacy has its place but does that mean we do not create something new, add to it? The designs I keep minimal, usually playing with contrasting solids, so that they endure. Sustainability is when my creations are relevant for 10 to 15 years,” says Dadu.

Amit Aggarwal with his repurposed nylon creation

Jajodia, like Dadu, has blended the thin threadwork of lace and chikan to create an all new gossamer surface while keeping to classical cuts. “The real flamboyance is blending lacework with chikankari,” she says.

Weaving together embroideries of every kind and stringing appliques together to create a new texture are what have made Mishra a permanent fixture at the Paris Haute Couture week. Keeping to wearable lines, his originality lies in telling nature stories of Himalayan meadows — fiery red pomegranate flowers turning to ripe fruit, a bouquet of peonies and a busy fish pond full of lilies on a sunny day. “It features vibrant surfaces adorned with aari thread-work, bugle beads, kundan, various kinds of rhinestone crystals, glass beads, freshwater pearls, sequins, nakshi pita work, all meshed into each other, you don’t see the cloth,” says Mishra. The West may have copied chintz but it didn’t know it could be recreated in a new avatar. “The soul is Indian but our creations are more absorptive of other influences,” says Mishra. Our ateliers are finally taking the world by surprise.