Indian designer takes Frog Princess to Milan

Sabyasachi Mukherjee will be showing a range of delicately stained and printed skirts, dresses and jackets at the Milan Fashion Week.

Indian designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee will be showing a range of delicately stained and printed skirts, dresses and jackets at the Milan Fashion Week.

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"The clothes are a version of my Frog Princess collection at the (India) fashion week (earlier this year). I have great faith in them," said Mukherjee while giving a sneak preview of the very avant garde clothes at New Delhi's Carma style shop hours before flying to Milan.

He would be part of the pret-a-porter segment of the event with his collection priced between $40 and $800 apiece.

Full of distressed embroidery and detailing like tin buttons covered with a layer-flap of woven cloth, the collection is very bohemian chic.

Mukherjee sort of burst into the scene a couple of years ago after a dazzling collection inspired by gypsies and prostitutes of Kolkata's infamous red light district Sonagachi.

Since then Mukherjee has become the darling of India's nascent fashion industry and his outing to Milan is expected to further cement his status.

As he fingers the clothes, artistic versions of grunge rags - skirts with slivers of dyed cotton stitched in jagged seams at the hems or waist, jackets with old bronze coins as embellishments - Mukherjee shows a special silver-oxtail friendship band on his wrist.

This was given to him by the representative of the London store Browns after his superb showing at the India fashion show where his models sashayed to the tune of a single violinist.

Now at Milan, one of world's four top fashion centres (with Paris, London and New York), Mukherjee would be part of the best of the style circuit.

Milan has more than runway shows and follows the London Fashion Week. This would be the spring-summer 2005 collection.

"I'm praying very hard," grinned a visibly nervous Mukherjee. He would be the second Indian designer after veteran Tarun Tahiliani to show at the Milan Fashion Week last year.