Ganesha on the Beach

Rajesh Pratap Singh makes fun of his back problems as WIFW takes a trip through Wendell Rodricks' Goa and James Ferreira's Mumbai

Rajesh Pratap Singh

The Personal meets the Pathological

IT had been one of the most anticipated shows of this edition of WIFW, simply because top-lining designer Rajesh Pratap Singh's ill health deemed him MIA for the past year. The spilling over hall bore testimony to how much he was missed. But Pratap was still in the mood of blink-and-miss; his moonless-night lighting and excessive smoke machinations made his comeback line a bit hard on the eyes.

His parade largely comprised severe cocktail dresses with power shoulders and a spine detail on the back was a bit of him poking fun at his own trouble-weary back. He introduced a new technique called 'tesselation', which is playing with the fabric by hand and making Origami-esque hexagons. A wonderful new silhouette that we've seen in many shows this season is the bar jacket with teensy shorts. Also lovely were an armour-top, cowl-bottom dress and another digi-printed draped frock. A short crop jacket and a pencil skirt with peplum hem offered romantic relief in this otherwise funereal procession. As were the two incredibly chic fringed dresses that seemed like PVC in all the smoke, but were actually shredded knit.

The finale dresses were especially delicious: metal-woven into jersey to make liquid gold draped dresses. Yes, you could say the collection was fit and fine.

Wendell Rodricks

Songs of the Orient

IT'S easy to take Wendell Rodricks out of Goa, but it's almost impossible to get the beach state out of its homegrown designer. For this season, Rodricks takes off on a nautical journey from Goa to Shanghai via the Malacca Strait and Macao.

True to his signature, Rodricks presented fluid and body-lengthening silhouettes in the shapes of tunics, lungi trousers, capes and ruffled boleros on Day 1 of the Wills India Fashion Week (WIFW). He opened with a silver-spangled bikini top and a slit skirt, cleverly monikered a new-age kashti, the local drape. The Goan pano bhaju, on which Rodricks has especially written a book, came out in contemporary avatars like a short sleeve. His favourite cuts — the circle and the bias — were omnipresent. The colours were that of an early-morning sea, inspired by a basket of pastel eggs he saw at a market and shared a photograph of.

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