Indian designer war spills out in Colombo

Kapoor denies the allegations. ‘‘This is Greek to me, I didn’t know any of this happened. If Wendell was manhandled, he shouldn’t have been. The organisers were very unprofessional, none of our commitments were fructified,’’ he says.

Rodricks was invited by Chennai boutique, Studio Saks, to present in Colombo. Other designers invited were Shane and Falguni Peacock, Neeta Lulla and Anna Singh. Satya Paul and Gehani (her label is owned by Satya Paul) were told that the charity fashion show would showcase clothes by several Sri Lankan designers with the finale by Gehani, and that no other Indian designer would be present.

Gehani says: ‘‘I have emails from the organisers stating the flow of events and that we’d be the only ones showing… We only asked the organisers to do the event the way it was meant to be.’’

‘‘Initially, we had asked only Gehani to do the show for us,’’ clarifies Sumeeta Radha of the Sri Lankan Rotary. ‘‘But Rodricks has a large fan base in Colombo and we wanted to bring him down as well. We presumed the designers would understand once they were here, and didn’t think things would get out of hand.’’

Radha confirms Kapoor was against any other designer showing and Rodricks taking the ramp. ‘‘As for Subramaniam, he was under the influence of alcohol and regretful. He even apologised to Rodricks later.’’

Model Anchal Kumar was aghast at the treatment meted to Rodricks and refused to model for Gehani’s ensuing collection. ‘‘I don’t want to comment but I did what I thought was the right thing,’’ she says.

Another model, Mridula Chandrashekhar says: ‘‘It was neither a competition nor a paid show, people should have left their egos at home.’’