VS Naipaul attends Suneet Varma's show

Nobel laureate VS Naipaul was one of the eminent persons who attended Suneet Verma's spring-summer line recently.

With Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul smiling benignly on the front row and this year's Miss Afghanistan strutting the ramp, India's style master Suneet Varma showed a spring-summer line filled with delicious summer pastels and cut and crafted for hip, and not in-your-face, generation.

"These are for the daughters of the women who have loved and worn my clothes these many (almost two decades) years," Varma, his always unruly hair in excited disarray, told IANS after the show.

After years of dressing India's swish set in his trademark corsets and exuberant saris, Varma is in the process of reinventing his line to suit a whole new age-group girls turning to women.

Girls who are beginning to think of donning the sari for an evening or two but wouldn't dream of touching their mother's heavy stuff. For them comes the new look Suneet Varma - playful, light, yet losing none of the oomph that defines his fashion.

In what will surely be an instant hit, and is evidence of Varma's evergreen deft touch, he strung pearls as straps, across necklines and flung in neat rows over the shoulders - making the muted whiteness of the stones fuse effortlessly with the serene mischief of the printed pastels.

With a runway entry point crowned by trees at the backyard of the Hyatt Hotel Saturday night, Varma's feather-light collection of dreamy pastels - and lots of play of greens - had an add-on nature fresh appeal.

The summery, asymmetrical, layered dresses had gentle prints and the blouses, just a wisp of cloth tied like a basic bikini top at the back. There was the grand finale of Varma's intricately detailed saris too, but most of clothes in the collection can be worn as separates, and lend easily to mix-and-match.

"My new clientele are girls who are just beginning to try out the sari. They are young and want the same hip edge that their other clothes have in the ethnic wear too," smiled Varma. "It is a conscious attempt to reach out to a new market."

That's the way the pricing is geared too - between Rs.6,000 for the tops to Rs.12,000 or 14,000 for the entry range, lightly worked upon saris.

"We have consciously kept the price low so that it's easier for the young to access them," said Varma, who studied fashion in London and has hosted a style show on television.

Said Naipaul: "I liked the clothes. They were rather nice."

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