Rhapsody in blue

The exhibition curator beside Anthropophagie bleue, Hommage à Tennesse Williams (1960) by artist Yves Klein at the Pompidou-Metz museum in Metz. Pic/Getty Images

Three years in the making, and two years and nine months of waiting. Gaurav Jai Gupta's The Sky is Mine, a craft couture project for his label Akaaro, is finally ready. He calls it an enormous undertaking, not just in narrative scope but in patience and passion, or what Urdu better describes as
junoon.

Portrait of Yves Klein (1928-1962) from the late 1950s. Pic/Getty Images

Originally scheduled to show at the FDCI-led India Fashion Week in March 2020, the launch was postponed due to the pandemic. "My clothes have lived through COVID," Gupta, 40, laughs. "The project has had its own journey and life. Doing a live show also took a while because we were not happy with the opportunities that came our way until we finally decided to present it at an art gallery instead of as part of the fashion week calendar."

Handwoven Merino wool chevron blue silver blazer with liquid molten ice blue oversized kurta and metallic blue textured culottes; (right) handwoven silk engineered striped wraparound trousers with Jamdani silk top and circuit patterned overcoat

On September 30 this year, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) Noida presented Gupta's showing of many blue emotions; more specifically French artist Yves Klein's patented shade named International Klein Blue (IKB). "Akaaro is not gimmicky; it's a real, unapologetically straightforward brand. Those 15 minutes [of the show] is my movie where I take you into my world," he asserts.

Akaaro's team first made different combinations and patterns with mixed media on paper, using ultramarine blue, black and white

From a glimpse of the first model who wore an Indigo khadi tunic and 3D textured cotton bomber jacket paired with a handwoven Jamdani silk chadar - styled to appear like some interplanetary headpiece - to the following 40-odd garments, the visual intrigue stayed fixed on the brilliant blue palette and drape of the fabrics. Clearly, these garments were made with an eye on the lines and an incredible sense of flow, to the point where individual garments seemed to blend into each other, or two sarees twisted into a raw, carnal squeeze. It became impossible to tell if a drape was actually a saree at all. "Nikhil D [stylist for the show] and I wanted to create a vibe with the drapes, and it begins with the fabrics that we come up with," Gupta adds, choosing to focus on handspun wool, silk, cotton-silk, cotton and jamdani.

Gaurav Jai Gupta with Kiran Nadar at the launch of The Sky is Mine show at KNMA, Noida

Gupta's interest in Klein goes back to a 2018 trip to Paris when he visited the Centre Pompidou, and came across the late artist's work of patented monochrome blue gouaches painted on white canvas. "Yves Klein was the trigger; there was something about the [IKB] saturation, its intensity and enigma. Until then I had not realised how much blue I had in my wardrobe, in my own subconscious or my spiritual practices. It took me to a mental space of questioning everything. Neel [blue] did all that for me," a curious Gupta explains.

Neel (laundry agent) was mixed with acrylic binders to try and achieve a shade closest to IKB

On his return, he got working at his Lado Sarai studio, exploring patterns and proportions with mixed media on paper before he could figure materials, weaving and dyeing techniques to employ. The blue, he says, took him back to school when his mother would rinse his uniform in Neel. Klein famously used different and sometimes dramatic media like sponge, fire and even humans to paint his canvases with the chromatic pigment.

Binders were sourced from screen printing units and mixed with neon blue ultramarine pigments and bluing agents. Art silk yarns sourced from Mubarakpur were dyed, this extended a little more shine to the yarn bringing it closer to IKB

To achieve this dense shade, Gupta and his team carried blue LED lights to the dyers in Delhi to give them a physical reference; digital references were proving to be failing. "But the lights weren't too helpful either. The dyers found the references confusing," he says. During his student years at London's Chelsea College of Art & Design, Gupta had worked closely with dyes, and refers to knowledge of colouring as his strength. A trip to Mubarakpur in Uttar Pradesh, a village known for its significant weaver and dyer community, changes the game. "He had this line of blue yarn but in synthetic silk," Gupta says of what he chanced upon at a weaver's home. "We brought it back to Delhi and spoke to technical experts and colouring artists at a few textile mills to understand how we could get the right pigment."

Monofilament silk bobbins used for weaving

His team scouted for synthetic blue ribbons at Delhi's local markets in the hope that they'd find a shade closer to IKB. A physical sample would work best. "One has to speak to the dyers in a language they'd understand, we can't possibly tell them: ‘thoda spiritual blue chahiye'. They will want to see the shade to recreate it.

After a point, I said, let's just do different versions of blue and see how many we can crack in a single project. We finally managed to get 28-30 shades of the colour."

Gupta compares the process of recreating the ultramarine pigment and putting together the show akin to "climbing Mount Everest". He also admits that it has become easier to go against the grain over the years. "I used to find the [fashion] industry intimidating, and emotionally exhausting." Going back to the basics and learning to let go, has helped, he thinks.

Gupta launched his brand of Indian textiles in 2008 with a master weaver. "In my head, I am a weaver, not a designer. The first purchase for my studio was a loom. I was trained in a studio, and pretty much all the work we do, including the weaves, is developed here," he says of his engineered
garments which he calls "craft couture."