Designer David Abraham sheds light on his collection The Sustainable Man at the menswear exhibition. By Unnati Joshi
We are at Sunil Sethi Design Alliance, thoroughgoing at the A&T store. Every single piece of garment is elegantly subtle, hanging neatly on the clothing lines. Except that they are reinvented from factory floor waste, odds and ends. Tapping our shoulders, David Abraham enters the store with designer Rajesh Pratap Singh. Casually dressed in black solid t-shirt and striped pants David takes us through his collection. “The idea was to find fashion from the waste. Everybody has used organic fabric and combined them in different ways. We have done recycling and up cycling. This collection has smaller footprint which were created by using fabric and techniques that involved sustainability and effective use of handloom. The colour palette is natural ranging from off-white to black, indigo to the basics. We’ve also used cora, which is an udyed fabric,” Abraham, the creative head of A&T says who along with the other two brands — Rajesh Pratap Singh and Pero — showcased this collection in the Capital recently.
As we walk through the store, an ultra-fine white shirt grabs our attention. We are tempted to pick it up because it makes for a smart gender-neutral statement. “It’s a menswear collection, it’s quite masculine,” he laughs. But the designer also makes sure that we find something for ourselves.
For Abraham, fashion is identity. “Every single thing that we choose to cover our body with is a statement. We are making fashion decisions from the time we were kids, ‘I am going to wear this shirt with this particular pants. My friend’s wearing a red shirt, I must get a red shirt. Oh! he has got a Swatch watch, I want that too.’ Fashion is identity and nobody can take it from you. It has been a part of our lives all along,” he tells us.
It starts drizzling. “Is it rainingIJ Thank God! I hope it cools down the weather,” he smiles.
We are now at the lobby, sitting on the sofa as he shares his design philosophy. “From a philosophical point of view, I believe that going slow and taking one step at a time is a very valid approach of doing things. I don’t think it is necessary that everything has to be huge and the way the world is going now, I think small is a very viable way to grow.”
He believes in the ideology of reinventing the label each season and keeping it contemporary, Abraham likes to work in defined and challenging parameter. “I think I have been inspired by parameters, I am always happy when I am working within a tight constraint. If you ask me to do whatever I want to, I will do nothing and if I am confined to something like this particular collection where I had to recycle stuff and use it in a new way, I would love it. I like to work with a challenge and defined parameters,” Abraham says.
Walking us down the memory lane, Abraham shares, “My journey has been exciting and also painful in some ways because you make so many mistakes but then you learn. Now we have been here for such a long time. It wasn’t something that happened by chance. From the start itself, fashion was always in my mind and I was clear that this is where my passion lies. I think what I like about my journey is that it has always been a challenge and not static. It’s nice because there’s always a new challenge and that’s what keeps me going. When we started it was very difficult as there was very little fashion in India, we started at a time when there was no awareness and that’s the reason we started selling in the West. We launched the brand in london and for the first eight to ten years we were primarily selling at the West because there was a market there. Past ten years have been very exciting because India has opened up and has become a large and sophisticated market.”
Sipping our lemon ice tea we ask Abraham the secret of his successful partnership with Rajesh Thakore. Smiling and making it sound all easy he quips, “You have to be very open and transparent. You have to share everything whether negative or positive. We work together, we fight, we argue, we have differences in our opinions and we have managed to survive for so many years. I think it’s a level of trust. We talk things through, the more you work as a designer, the more you realise that listening is important.”
Abraham feels it’s an exciting time for the Indian fashion industry. “Indian fashion industry is diverse and it’s growing. When people talk about the industry, they just talk about a few designers. But Indian fashion industry is from every designer doing the fashion show to people buying high street fashion from the Sarojini Nagar market. It’s all fashion. Fashion doesn’t have to have designer brands and the way Indians are consuming fashion in such large numbers, I think in future we will be one of the largest markets in the world. It’s an exhilarating time for fashion in India,” he says.
Compare Indian fashion industry with that of the West. “Why compare,” he asks.
“I don’t think we should compare ourselves to the West anymore. If we are comparing ourselves to them, we are making a very big mistake. We shouldn’t look at it as something to emulate. But it is inevitable that we will be compared because we are in the process of absorbing all these brands. But we don’t have to look at it as something to copy or admire or emulate.
Whatever happens in West, even if people appreciate it, it is always reinterpreted here and that’s what I like about Indian fashion. It is developing its own voice,” he adds.
A piece of adviceIJ “Try not to overwork it, try to be as honest as you can. Always believe in yourself and don’t compromise.”
Photo: Pankaj Kumar