Notes from the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week

Wendell Rodricks opening show at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW) had him deliver a resort collection high on chic, and coolly casual. Rodricks played around with sheer linens, organzas and polished cottons, magically weaving out of them seamless over-shirts, jersey dresses and tent dresses, all inspired by Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris’ Cubism. The squares, a salient feature of the Cubist movement, were interpreted through padded shoulders and square necklines, but what really caught the eye were Rodricks’ take on Indian ensembles like the lungi, the dhoti and the sari.

“You see his clothes and you wonder how something so simple could look so delicate and gorgeous,” gushed Kavita Bhartia of Ogaan at the end of the show, while socialite Feroze Gujral nodded in assent.

Narendra Kumar’s show was conducted without music, models walked the ramp glumly as they have for the same designer before, even as catcalls and loud hoots erupted in the show area. The collection,inspired by what the designer called the process of introspection, had a series of flounced dresses and trousers in linen and silk, taffeta and organza, with embroidered details. The fitted pants and the cropped jackets were meticulous, but lacked any chutzpah. We’ll remember the silence, not the clothes. The first Indian designer to step out of the domestic market to tap the mecca of high fashion: Paris. The only Indian designer to have conceived of an autobiography that cost a neat Rs one lakh—there’s very little that is conventional about Ritu Beri’s career. But her comeback show to the Indian fashion fold, after almost a hiatus of 10 years, could make up for the sense of being let down.