A sweater sets the mood at Lakmé Fashion Week Festive 2020

Let’s begin with the good bits. While the nation’s second digital style season, Lakmé Fashion Week Festive 2020, started with Manish Malhotra’s couture presentation titled Ruhaaniyat (282K views on the official LFW Instagram web page), the first ‘show’ I noticed belonged to 11.11 (106K views). Not that I didn’t see Malhotra’s later. I did, and loved the unabashed luxurious and opulence of his embellished lehengas and stylish sherwanis. But it was the simplicity of a single indigo-dyed jumper, proven being made by hand from scratch, that caught in my thoughts.

There is not any larger luxurious any designer may present in the present day; all my friends shall be carrying this 11.11 sweater quickly, I do know. It spoke for the whole assortment, and revealed exactly the place 11.11’s power lies. It was the concept — uncooked fibre being spun into yarn, dyed indigo, after which knit right into a easy jumper all by hand — that marked it out. This is what an Indian model has to supply, the video stated, loud and clear.

The India story

But there are different methods of displaying what your nation has to supply; a lesson pushed residence by the All About India present (104K views) that included capsule collections by six designers. It started with Payal Khandwala’s outsized floral motifs in jamdani from Phulia in West Bengal. Next got here Rajesh Pratap Singh’s futuristic ikat saris for Satya Paul, developed in Puttapaka in Telengana. True to her love for linen, Anavila Misra took off to Dumka in Jharkhand to combine it with the {k}hatwa weave. Suket Dhir confirmed up to date silhouettes in Banarasi brocades, whereas Urvashi Kaur’s up to date shibori and tie-dyes got here from the clusters she works with in Haryana and Rajasthan, creating expertise and innovating with the communities there. Meanwhile, Abraham & Thakore seemed to Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh for the area’s famed block prints, particularly in the delicate gold khadi approach that they utilised to theatrical impact.

The sari, too, had its second. From Parsi gara-bordered Uppadas by Gaurang Shah (106K views) to metallic moon-phase drapes in Banarasi brocade by Hemang Agrawal (102K views), there have been sufficient factors of curiosity to make sure a great retail response in a market slowly waking as much as India’s festive season in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. Even Rimzim Dadu, who confirmed as a part of the joint finale (an idea distinctive to Indian style weeks; 230K views) with Saaksha & Kinni, made a powerful case for this timeless drape. And she did so by making it — by way of her distinctive sculptural strategies and reflective surfaces — timeless.

Digital bumps

So far, so good. But this assessment may nicely have come from a daily, pre-Covid style week at the Jio Garden in Mumbai. How did LFW being absolutely digital work aside from the absolute numbers of views it garnered? We should look to the expertise itself.

The first amongst them was the digital present format, which, going by the CGI, was not price the effort. The Gen Next class, which I all the time look ahead to, was sick served with outmoded graphics and backdrops that drew consideration away from the garments. Another designer had a post-apocalyptic Pleistocene fantasy going with woolly mammoths come again to life amid a ruined cityscape overrun with tropical foliage. Yet one other featured big charkha wheels spinning in the background like the windmills of sustainability, flanked by CGI pillars that attempted their hardest to look classic.

These are factors of non-public aesthetic. So a deeper dive into the digital expertise turns into vital. The issues, I’m sorry to say, started from day 1, when logging on to the official LFW web site grew to become troublesome. I chalked it as much as the web site being overloaded, and glad myself with viewing the reveals on their Instagram deal with. What I seemed ahead to was the ‘virtual showroom’, a spot for designers to conduct B2B and B2C enterprise. While I’m unable to touch upon the former, as I by no means registered as a purchaser, the technique of registration, even just a few days after LFW ended, is not any cakewalk. The web site crashes with superb regularity, and, in case it doesn’t, you’ll nonetheless have to be authorised by a back-end crew to entry the showroom and designers’ collections.

The concepts are there, however the execution is the place they hit a snag. And as I kind this, I’m glad we’re going by way of these teething troubles. If something, it’s these issues that may hopefully present designers how essential it’s for them to put money into their particular person on-line presences. Here’s hoping.

The writer is a style commentator and Communications Director at the House of Angadi.