Rahul Mishra’s Relationship with Couture
If architectural beauty has a fragrance of order and balance, you could smell its headiness; if embroidered flowers have the rhythm of architectural compositions, you could view them; if garments can be compellingly absorbing for their sheer splendor—regardless of their market, customer, price, or how egalitarian (or not) a social system they offer to the hands that create them—they were that.
This would be one way to describe Rahul Mishra’s show Maraasim on Saturday evening at the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi, the venue of the ongoing FDCI India Couture Week presented by Hindustan Times and Sunil Sethi Design Alliance.
Photo: Ashish Arora
From Rahul Mishra’s 2018 couture collection Maraasim.
“Maraasim” signifies relationships in Urdu, said the press note and this collection “is based on connections with the past and the present.” The press note composed more like a poetic handout strangely did not bother with describing the clothes, their silhouettes, the specific textiles used, the kind or nature of embroideries or even the colour palette. Instead it was described overall as “fine works of art on handwoven textiles bearing testimony to the inherent finer details of Indian craft.” A nice cluster of words which actually does the injustice of non-specific description to some of the finest garments that have been sent out on the Indian couture space in the last few years.
Photo: Ashish Arora
From Rahul Mishra’s 2018 couture collection Maraasim.
Photo: Ashish Arora
From Rahul Mishra’s 2018 couture collection Maraasim.
Photo: Ashish Arora
From Rahul Mishra’s 2018 couture collection Maraasim.
Maraasim was set out for the audience on a set that resembled a garden. It put Mishra many notches above his last couple of couture collections. It also puts him in the slot of The Boy to reckon with among The Men, who make Indian couture the scintillating assemblage of design and craftsmanship that it is. It underlined, again, like some of his pret collections have in the past, the fact, that this industry has in Mishra a brilliant artist whose progress and work we should use as a bookmark from time to time.
Maraasim surely deserves a few lines from Rumi, the metaphors of Arabesque that the designer uses, but it demands fundamental descriptions even more. So the collection had saris, lehngas, cholis, long jackets, capes, kurta-dupatta-pant sets, long tapered tops for women, achkans, sherwani and kurta pyjamas for men. Most ensembles were suited for bridal and wedding wear without the rain of shine that can soak many such creations. The colours rose from white to salmon pink, butter cream to soft peach and pale orange, pistachio green to a deeper orange and a light red. Almost every single piece was hand-embroidered in details so exquisite that some hurt the eye for their prettiness.
Photo: Ashish Arora
From Rahul Mishra’s 2018 couture collection Maraasim.
Photo: Ashish Arora
From Rahul Mishra’s 2018 couture collection Maraasim.
However, Mishra’s Maraasim made a few other points.
- It showed how the designer has made embroidery his calling card in couture so much so that the handwoven textiles he uses and often proudly talks about face the threat of minimal notice. They are the field that he creates on but what blooms on the clothes and memory is the handwork on them. We don’t even know if they are Chanderi or Maheshwari, as a rhetorical point for instance.
- It showed how he is learning to strategically differentiate the pret that he shows at Paris Fashion Week from his couture while keeping both flexible and fine enough to feed into each other. So given a customer order, a Rahul Mishra piece of couture can be softened down to become a pret piece, while a pret garment can be beauteously uplifted to become a part of couture.
- It showed why editing a collection is a much needed art and part of a fashion show. Maraasim could have been better edited and tighter. While the collection’s white story was most engaging, its magic began to plateau when more garments started pouring out. These were overwhelming pieces, so they needed a restraint in number.
- While Maraasim was Mishra’s menswear debut, it was the menswear that held least promise. The white, embroidered diaphanous dupatta drapes given to some male models were too effeminate. It may perhaps take Mishra a while to recognize the pulse of this genre before he makes it his own.
- While the designer has been vocal about reverse migration of karigars and the employment he generates by generating work for them, the fact that he takes his bow with his wife Divya is strong messaging we must not overlook. A work partnership that has evolved as the Rahul Mishra brand has grown must not just be respected but worn on the sleeve.
- Maraasim also shows the relationship couture has with this country’s fashion creator and consumer. Whatever we may say about recycling, upcycling, sustainability, simplicity, or the love-hate grammar between less and more that the entire world is challenged with, Indian artisanal traditions or in this case, its hand embroideries are being contemporarised in ways that must make us pause and think. And applaud for.
https://thevoiceoffashion.com/centrestage/reviews/rahul-mishras-relationship-with-couture-879