The Changing Face of Indian Fashion

Mohini Boparai Guleria

Mohini Boparai Guleria is the director of merchandising & creative at Exclusively.in. A graduate of TU Delft University, Mohini moved from Amsterdam to New Delhi in 2004 to start Boparai Architectural Services, an architectural and design firm. After eight years of being in the business, she decided to join forces with her then-fiancé as a partner on Exclusively.in. Mohini is also the founder of Charity100, a not-for-profit feeder school for underprivileged children.

Tarun Tahiliani and Preeti S Kapoor designs

Indian fashion is is ever-evolving. With so much culture attached to our fashion sensibilities, Indian wear is all but dull. Mohini Boparai takes us through the revolution of Indian fashion with her experiences. 

When I decided to shift my focus from architecture to Indian fashion, I came onto the scene with two things in mind:

1) The immensity and richness of Indian culture and tradition and how everything we do is deeply rooted in it, and

2) The increasing number of affluent Indians all over the world.

When these two factors come together, for example, at a wedding, tradition becomes sheer opulence. We all know what the Big, Fat Indian Wedding looks like. Such a wedding, which stretches on for several days, usually serves as a vehicle to show the community how you’ve flourished.

The Rise of the Modern Bride

Yet, the stereotypically decadent wedding has perhaps left many weary and looking for something else. In his essay for Business of Fashion, Imran Ahmed writes, “The rise of the modern bride is contributing to an incipient, but noticeable shift away from opulence and excess… this shift poses potential challenges for many of India’s top designers, who have built their businesses on the country’s bridal market and who have become accustomed to charging whatever price they fancy.” The Indian sensibility has changed and with it, Indian fashion has too.

The rise of the modern Indian bride is contributing to a gradual yet firm shift away from the opulent extravaganza to a more refined and globally on-trend way of doing things. The typical Indian wedding outfit has always been heavy, studded with diamantes and intricately adorned with zari embroidery et al. However, today many brides-to-be have realised less is more, and are moving towards less ostentatious wedding outfits. Not that the latter isn’t expensive. It’s just that the Indian bride today is more chic.

Less is More

She has a global approach because she sees the entire world around her; she’s up-to-date and her ideas about marriage and tradition have expanded. She might belong to a very small fraction of society, yet it is interesting to see how her changing attitude towards the wedding is trickling down into mainstream Indian fashion. Anita Dongre’s recent Jaipur Bride campaign comes to mind here. In the video, we see this Jaipur Bride clothed in the most beautiful lengha-choli, while she looks at the world on her iPad. In this depiction, there is no tense contrast between her Jaipur palace and the technologically advanced world she inhabits. The young bride no longer has her head covered with her dupatta and goes stylishly minimal with her accessories. She is sexy, intelligent and no longer coy. 

AZVA, Rohit Bal, Raghavendra Rathore

Virtually Global

Although many designers prefer the ultra-ethnic for their creations, one still notices a subtle shift in their palette and ornamentation. I think we are moving further and further away from the bling of the 90s, the kind depicted in extravagant Bollywood wedding scenes of that time. A new aesthetic is dawning, shaped by a more global understanding of the world. With e-commerce, anyone can get their hands on a Sabyasachi sari, no matter where they are. The Indian designer doesn’t cater to just local buyers anymore. He (or she) is seeing a demand from across the world. 

When I sat down with designer Gaurav Gupta, he said, “What we’ve done with the sari is we’ve made [it] much more approachable, in the sense of styling; and it’s much more comfortable to wear. And we’ve kind of made it very global. It’s like the new Indian global voice.” This ‘new Indian Global voice’ has undoubtedly had a major influence on how today’s designers look at Indian wear. From colour palettes to more contemporary silhouettes (the sari gown being a big trend at Delhi Couture Week last year), designers are no longer shackled to the age-old ideas of what a sari or lehenga should look like. They dare to break the rules.  

Today Indian designers do not create in isolation. They’re aware of their global audience. After all, it’s very easy today to retail online. 

Embracing Culture

It gives me immense joy to see how the world is embracing Indian fashion and craftsmanship. At Anthropologe, a popular US retail store and e-commerce platform, you will regularly find clothes by Indian designers who are creating contemporary fashion for a non-Indian audience. Here you will find designs by Ranna Gill, Rohit Gandhi and Rahul Khanna applying Indian craftsmanship to non-Indian silhouettes. 

Still it is very early to truly define what contemporary Indian fashion is and what it will become but what we can safely assume is that there has been a considerable shift from what it was even a decade ago.