Chequered course

Ashima Sehajpal Batish 

If you too believe that the past casts its shadow on the present, you will understand why Samant Chauhan dabbled strictly in off-white for nine years. It is in the tenth year — for the Autumn Winter (AW) 2018 collection of Amazon India Fashion Week (AIFW) — that he switched his colour palette to black. His experiments with colour end here. His experiences take charge.

At his village near Bhagalpur in Bihar, electricity was a luxury. For a major part of his childhood, it wasn’t even there. And when the village was electrified, the supply would last only a couple of hours. “We would celebrate switching on the ‘zero-watt bulbs’ and the little light that lit up our world,” reminiscences the fashion designer whose collection Glitch March flagged off the recent season of AIFW. That explains his love for and obsession with off-white and why only black fits into the space, as the other reality.

His rule about the colour scheme shouldn’t imply he is averse to changes. You can tick all the other boxes — of fabric, silhouette, loom or even the fashion show — where he hasn’t taken the treaded path. Just to prove the point, he didn’t meet one single-set criteria this time. Like always, flowy garments in tussar silk took to the ramp, but with intermittent presence of polyster, a fabric he once loathed. In an earlier interview with us, he told us that even the silk he uses for his garments is organically sourced and it is ensured that the silkworm doesn’t get killed in the process. “Organic was the keyword for newborn environment enthusiasts like me, but there exists an alternate truth too.” He adds that organic cotton needs gallons of water to grow. Its substitute, polyster, on the other hand, can be recycled and doesn’t consume as many natural resources. It is also more cost effective.

He doesn’t term the new preferences of fashion fraternity as commercialisation. Rather calls them rationalisation. “How do you justify the use of handloom to produce a fabric, when you have powerloom to complete the same task in less time, with competitive quality? It’s like travelling by a bullock-cart from Delhi to Kolkata when you have access to affordable air services.” Employment, he suggests, should be created in new domains. Fashion activism that flashed the cards of organically sourced material, weavers’ benefit and sustainability should be logistically driven. “Or you won’t be able to uphold the causes for long. Additional costs in production will have to be borne by the customer, and that doesn’t make sense.”

Samant is also a regular at the Bridal Fashion Week in Canada, where again his collections are sought after. It is a virgin market for Indian designer wear. “People had access to boutiques back in India, but not designer stores.” And then, the online designer stores came into being. These popularised Indian designers across the world. “One can just log on to online stores and check which designer is making what and order.”He realised it better after he launched his own online shop. “I have clients from Kenya calling up to seek alterations they want in a particular outfit.”

His collection Glitch March — of all blacks and less whites — too generated many queries. It did catch the eyeballs, for the fall and the silhouettes, and also for how it was presented. It was true to its name. He introduced a flaw in each aspect of the show. Be it music that started loud in the beginning and mellowed down towards the end, or seating arrangement, where last row was meant for the fashion’s VIPs, where men with salt and pepper hair made for male models, and where the show began with couture and ended with a prêt number. “Everything about the show was in reverse, except for the fact that it was the opening show.” And black just fitted perfectly into the scheme of things.

The tenth-year show deserved special treatment and it did get one.