What does fashion mean for us now?

With COVID under control and physical shopping back on track, the collections at the latest edition of FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week offered a few answers

"We are actually showing IRL!!” said David Abraham in a message in the lead-up to the live staging of the Abraham & Thakore show on October 8. Oh, the joy of exclamation marks! Experiencing the delight of once again watching a fashion show in person was mixed with mild confusion about what “normal” actually means to us now. Do we keep the mask, and carry on?

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Around the same time last week, Paris Fashion Week closed with Extinction Rebellion activist Marie Cohuet gatecrashing the Louis Vuitton catwalk show holding a banner that read: Overconsumption = Extinction. “It is not easy to get into a place where the powerful enact the codes. But the urgency is too great. The fashion industry cannot deny the ecological crisis,” wrote Cohuet in a Twitter post after the show, referring to the snowballing climate crisis. This example is merely the latest in a series of contemplations that have left everybody in fashion in a funk.

A greater emphasis on transparent supply chains is compelling us to look at India’s traditional crafts and the hands that kept them around. In a so-called resistance movement, homegrown labels sprung up overnight, claiming to do right in craft clusters. While the ideas of morality and altruism became synonyms for an obsessive call to crafts action on one hand, bridal couture collections—universally revered for handmade, slow-made craftsmanship—were rated like bingeable TV shows. 

This apparent contradiction highlights an important question: what does fashion actually mean in a post-pandemic world? As economies slowly open up, escapist dressing is tempting, and naturally, people are looking at updating their wardrobe. Can sustainability and consumption co-exist?

It’s all about perspective. The standout shows at the recently concluded FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week applied a mixture of imagination, necessity and answers to how we feel and connect to our present lives via what we wear.

SWGT by Shweta Gupta

“Nobody is coming to help me,” Shweta Gupta admits on the phone from Delhi. Founded in 2018, Gupta’s SWGT quickly became a label to watch. Like Gupta, 34, many young designers have come to this conclusion after Coronavirus crushed smaller, independently run businesses with nowhere to turn for funds or guidance. “I don’t come from a business family, I belong to the service class.” Desperate to save her label, she reached out to textile and fashion agencies in India, but found little success. The only morsel of advice offered freely was to start designing Indian wear. Adamant to stand her ground, she began researching and contacting international and Indian buyers while working on launching her own e-commerce site. Thankfully, she managed to bag a few orders. “These orders helped sustain my small army of craftspeople in Chanderi.”

This season, she was named the winner of Nexa’s The Spotlight programme along with Naushad Ali, and showcased a digital show that she chose to shoot in the Himalayas. She used cotton Chanderi blends, and collaborated with weaver clusters in Murshidabad to introduce Mulberry silk. The clothes were beautifully made—rarely solemn or loaded with gimmicks. But the highlights dwelled elsewhere; in the nuanced surfaces of intricate smocked embroidery with glass beads, pin-tuck pleats and hand crochet. 

“[This is] little happiness I am catching on to... I love working on looms, developing my own fabrics and yarn dyes. Pattern cutting is my forte and I hope to keep championing it through my clothes,” she says.

Tencel x Satya Paul by Rajesh Pratap Singh

For all his characteristic reticence, which includes minimal social (media and IRL) presence, Rajesh Pratap Singh sure knows how to throw an Insta-worthy visual party. Optimism is apparently a big factor in what goes viral. Presented in collaboration with Tencel and Satya Paul, this collection saw Singh take grand leaps into shapes and volumes. The colours also looked straight out of Andy Warhol’s opalescent frames. You can positively file it under dopamine dressing. But when Singh does it, otherwise known for his meticulous blacks and whites, troubles melt like lemon drops, in the words of Judy Garland.  

MXS by Monisha Jaising x Shweta Bachchan Nanda

Given the rise of the wellness movement accelerated by the pandemic, the plot at the MXS show (Monisha Jaising x Shweta Bachchan Nanda) was pretty flexible. Slide on a jacket with ’80s pop detailing—spangles, shine, the lot—over spandex shorts and a top, or step up your game in a super-relaxed OG tracksuit set and you are unconsciously eroding hierarchies of dressing. It was as if they were taking a cue from a recent article in The Cut, suggesting tracksuits are cute and leisurely options after Netflix’s mega successful Korean thriller Squid Game.

Abraham & Thakore 

Classic styles of the lungi, kurta, robe and pyjama have traditionally defined quintessential leisurewear in India. Layer these with creamy textures (kantha, applique and threadwork that clearly mimicked sports mesh) and sincerity of future-adjacent textiles (R|Elan fabrics made from recycled PET bottles) and you have the Assemble, Dissemble, Reassemble collection by Abraham & Thakore. Despite the focus on a casual attitude, the designs looked very considered. They reflected a demand for more practicality in fashion, and celebrated the idea of feeling good.

AK-OK by Anamika Khanna

Anamika Khanna is on a roll. After a brief hiatus, she has been a regular fixture on fashion week’s digital calendars for the last two seasons. For her on-ground show, she decided to stage AK-OK, her ready-to-wear label which was introduced in 2019. In a recent interview with mid-day, Khanna had said: “It stopped being just fashion a long ago. There’s a freedom in not following trends, and mismatching your outfits. There is a surprising harmony in unremarkable choices.” She meant what she had said. Brought forward by bold logos and zippy graphics and prints, the super pared-down styles of kaftans and kimonos, wispy jackets and dresses, and kurta-pyjama sets hit the sweet spot between streetwear and high fashion.

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