Fashion week has fruity end
Despite an abundance of psychedellic colours and razzmatazz in a show that began two hours late, the 'Fruit Shock' at 5th India Fashion Week's Grand Finale was nothing much to chew on. Designers Aki Narula, Anamika Khanna and Anshu Arora-Sen did not quite manage to provide an epilogue worthy of India's biggest fashion event, writes Sunada Kumar.
Despite an abundance of psychedellic colours and razzmatazz in a show that began two hours late, the 'Fruit Shock' at 5th India Fashion Week's Grand Finale was nothing much to chew on.
Designers Aki Narula, Anamika Khanna and Anshu Arora-Sen, chosen by event sponsor Lakme to interpret its look of the year, did not quite manage to provide an epilogue worthy of India's biggest fashion event.
'Pop' - Sen's rendering of Lakme's theme for Summer 2004, 'Fruit Shock' - turned out to be a damp squib. The 1997 NIFT gradaute used the colours of the theme - Pink and Green - to create a bubble-gum line reminiscent of a cross between a candy store and a barbie doll convention. Although she brought alive a child's sketchbook in 3D, the designer concentrated a bit too much on the colours and failed to create anything memorable.
Aki, who casued quite a stir with a 'sex goddess goes to war and then to a bar' outfits last year, came up with another funky and wearable line for his part of the show entitled 'Crush'. The Mumbai designer freely mixed ethnic embroidery with jazzy motifs in a collection for which he reportedly studied the colours of different fruits and their texture when crushed and made into pulp. Net skirts in lime over pink slips were fun yet practical. The Mumbai designer not only brought you to a carnival but was also willing to help you get dressed for it! Flirty florals, textured chiffons, luxe knits and vegetable dyes were all tossed together to give a new twist to the multi-layering of the summer silhouette.Khanna, soon to become the first Indian designer to sell a global brand, definitely has a thing for hip-hop. In her collection 'Burst', the models did a bit of gangsta-walking while holding sleeping bags which doubled as boom boxes and ear muffs that replaced ear phones. Energetic and vivacious, the collection targetted a younger audience in line with Lakme's summer range. The silhouettes were global and every fabric used was ethnic and authentic.
But Aki and Khanna's brave efforts notwithstanding, the Grand Finale could not live up to some of the other highlights of the week that included Rajesh Pratap's show featuring a mindblowing mix of great cuts and rich fabrics and of course Sabyasachi Mukherjee who once again stole the thunder with his grunge-gone-romantic dreamy collection.India Fashion Week saw 57 designers strut their stuff in 35 shows during the seven days, attracting more than 400 buyers, including Browns and Saks Fifth Avenue.
After the Grand Finale, Lakme hosted one of the biggest parties this fashion week, as bottles of bubbly poured endlessly into the night and revellers danced under zigzagging neon lights.
"I am glad it's all over," said designer Rohit Bal, who now goes to open a store in Bangalore. "Till the next fashion week, cheers!"
(With inputs from Indo-Asian News Service)