Couturist Rohit Bal looks to Czarist Russia for inspiration and distills it with home-grown craftsmanship in his collection for the finale. By Rinku Ghosh
He bought a book 18 times from Bahri and Sons, everytime misplacing it while reading and for some reason never being able to rescue it from his pile of books. Yet so fascinated was he by its contents and cover that he would buy it again and resume reading from where he had left off. “It had this lovely flower motif that I could not get out of my head. And I could not find it as it would inevitably get lost in the stacks of other books which currently occupy two rooms with no space to move. Finally, the shop owner told me that he had sold 22 editions of the title and I had picked up 18 of them. I was persistent and obsessive about it,” Rohit Bal said, roaring with full-throated laughter. But then the city would not have indulged Gudda had he not been anything but passionate and innocent.
You can never beat an original when it comes to couture. You can never beat the inspiration when it comes to painting a canvas. And you can never beat novelty when it comes to presentation.
So it was with designer Rohit Bal’s warm afternoon preview of his 60-piece collection that is expected to close the FDCI India Couture Week tomorrow. It is expected to be an orchestra of ideas with Gudda being the master of ceremonies. Sharing tidbits over a lavish lunch at the very select A Ta Maison in Sundernagar, Gudda brought back the couturier’s studio, explaining every detail of his bejewelled collection, which has been inspired by Czarist Russia, in his mind the ultimate expression of luxury.
So there were the Czar, Czarina and the crown prince in black velvet and jewels in their regal reception room as guests clinked coloured crystalline glasses, another of Bal’s product line that rolls out in August. He even showed us the jewel-crusted pure crystal wine glasses, the result of a year of his travels and research.
“I don’t do anything much. Just travel, experience and express,” he told us. This experiential range also means his artistry is in full flow. But it is in tempering it with subtlety, self-control and grace that he comes through in the collection, each piece as wearable and regal, worn as an ensemble or in parts.
The collection — black and gilded, and accented with ruby, emerald and diamond neckpieces, tiaras and crowns — has fusion intricacies. Muted zardozi and fine Kashmiri kaani blend with crewel work and petit point and chain stitch, velvet meets hand woven silks, rich jewels adorn autumn leaves while poppies and irises unobtrusively criss-cross jackets and quilted gowns. Though Bal gives credit to his team for seeing him through six months of work, his jewellers, Shri Ram Hari Ram from Dariba Kalan, insist the time and energy he put behind crafting each piece. “He sat four hours at a stretch to decide the combinations, lustre, cut and play. He was that particular.” We loved the trimmings on the assymetrical folds and lapels of the Czarina.
Bal thoughtfully calls his collection Kehkashan (galaxy) and writes, “It is deeply entrenched in the unmitigated philosophy of extreme luxury. I was overwhelmed by the incredible treasures and the immeasurable excesses of what was once, perhaps, the richest and most glamorous royal regimes the world has ever seen. My time spent at the incredible palaces and museums of St Petersburg, the Hermitage, the Winter Palace, St Isaac’s Cathedral, The Church of the Spilled Blood all left me spellbound. I travelled literally through time into a labyrinth of a bizarre reality of excess wealth and absolute power. It was plain to see that there had to be a revolution in a land so brutally divided between an insensitive aristocracy and the suffering peasantry. In Moscow, the Kremlin, the armoury, the Almazny Fond (the diamond fund) were bewildering and left me awestruck. This collection is my personal interpretation and understanding of this opulence and beauty. For me this is a contemporary collection of a bygone period of excess toned down by my understated philosophy of style and timeless chic. This story sees an amalgamation of two distinct cultures and thought processes, that of Russian grandeur and the almost austere craftsmanship of my absolute true love, Kashmir.” And perhaps this is his way of making the twain meet.
Given Bal’s penchant for rescuing heritage, this is the second time that he is collaborating with Chandni Chowk’s first jewellery shop, 225 years old, for his setpieces. “We first import all the diamonds, then cut them for customisation. We have done rubies and cuts for the show. We have tried to curate a line that is not per se traditional Indian polki. You can probably carry one of these pieces with a Western dress in the evening,” said the young descendant Umang Gupta.
Dangling a heavy strand of about Rs 15 lakhs, the jeweller told us, “It’s not a lot, looking at the size. Also, this is not of low quality. There are two types of diamonds. One is syndicate and the other non-syndicate. The first is lustrous and shiny. Non-syndicate ones are a bit chalky. Also, our work is Bikaneri kundan, which compared to Jaipuri kundan, is finer and set in a thinner golden mesh. We have used polki with silver foil at its back to make it more luminous.” Recasting tradition with drama and living it everyday. That’s Bal for you.