It took Rohit Bal to rescue some bespoke creativity
Perhaps this was the much-needed “good story” from Kashmir at a time of gloom. Rohit Bal’s finale show for the India Couture Week, titled Kehkashaan, was a heart-felt tribute to the rich embroidery tradition and the intricate craftsmanship of a people who might still rescue themselves by weaving their own story. For the cypress, almonds, birds and chinar were not just about nature in this collection but the human ability to wrap themselves with their inspiration.
The offsite show at the Bikaner House was worth remembering in many respects. First, it was so not bridal/festive wear disguising itself as couture. It was pure couture — that summation of vision, imagination, grandeur, art, statement and originality. It took the finale to remind us what a bespoke collection should look like. Second, it was discerning and high-chair. Third, the collection was in sync with the international couture grammar of the season, high Empress lines, 40s’ style suiting, pleats and so on.
The fact that the audience was rapturous only indicated that there can be no show-stopper bigger than design. The collection was a cinematic sweep of lush, embroidered and bejewelled ensembles, inspired by the luxurious fashion of Czarist Russia. Historically, just before the Bolshevik revolution, the czarina rocked the Western European fashion world when she appeared in a long, straight and heavily embellished traditional coronation dress from Russia’s past.
Radically different from the waist-cinching corset and curve-hugging dress that was so fashionable in England, the robe completely obscured her figure. She looked striking in this looser silhouette, perhaps the first experiment in East-West fusion. Although Bal’s silhouettes were as flowing, be it in free-flowing crepe silk, quilted skirts and busts, the embellishments and the heavily-customised, European-style jewellery never overpowered the anchorage of the monotones — rich black, wine-red, pearl-white and a royal blue. We caught certain flashes of detail, like the Czarist insignia of the double-headed eagle in between Indian foliage. Or the flouncy peplums and the capes, where the florals seemed to sway, as if nodding in the breeze.
The boys looked resplendent, as did the designer, in their fitted jackets, coats and jodhpurs, each with just the right dash of brilliance courtesy a necklace, a slanted zardosi patch, the embroidered collar and cuffs, liberty tamed by a fine self-control. Yes there was the kaani, chain stitch, crewel, buttonhole and zardosi, all handy enough to translate the excess of the Czars in another time. But it was in the discipline and mind of the embroiderer in making it wearable that this collection shone through in contemporaneity.