Ganesha on the Beach

The Personal Meets the Pathological

Rajesh Pratap Singh

It was one of the most anticipated shows of this edition of Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, simply because Rajesh Pratap Singh's ill health had deemed him MIA for the past year.

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 technique called "tesselation" which is playing with the fabric by hand and making Origami-esque hexagons. A wonderful new silhouette that we've seen this season is the bar jacket with teensy shorts.

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

Songs of the Orient

Wendell Rodricks

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. 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 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.

... contd.

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