Compilation: Bhavna Khullar
As the Lakme Fashion Week goes live on 29th March, here is a quick sneak peak at this year’s participants for one of the most awaited fashion events of the year.
Arjun Khanna
Arjun Khanna focuses on all aspects of creativity and design for men`s fashion in India. He is best known for revolutionising men`s fashion with his intricate detailing, impeccable tailoring and rich opulent designs, which have been his signature and has become a hallmark of the Indian fashion industry.
Anirban/Rajesh
The most important aspect of this label is its international sensibility that crosses the boundaries of all ethnicities.
Abhishek Byas
This designer strongly believes in `freethinking`, hence he has emerged as a non-believer of perfectionism. His understanding of fashion comes across evidently through his silhouette, details, lines, shapes and colours.
Abhishek Dutta
Abhishek believes in creating garments with a difference. He emphasizes on wearability along with a futuristic look by combining unconventional fabrics like denims, velvets, leather with various ancient embroideries and futuristic cuts.
Anand Kabra
Anand Kabra is an unpredictable free thinker in his style statement. He possesses the ability to stride the worlds of Indian couture and international style with equal passion.
Aneeth and Chinar
Aneeth Arora and Chinar Farooqui take inspiration from local clothing trends. The duo came together after realizing their similar views and ideas on design, and after having worked together for almost a year.
Aastha Bahl
Aastha’s design philosophy emphasizes on the versatility of basic, functional pieces and the importance of comfort, using an eclectic mix of colours, fabrics and textures. She defines fashion as simple, classy and trendy with full attention to detail, fit, silhouette, styling and finishing.
Anuj Sharma
Anuj aims to understand human behaviour with the help of fashion.
Anupama Dayal
Anupama attempts at translating Indian textile traditions in her bold and modern signature style. The foundation of her work remains the revival of old printing and needle work techniques. The embellishment is eclectic – collages of wood, mirror, glass and textile.
Asmita Marwa
Asmita Marwa`s creativity puts together passion, shape, textures and touch in a pattern with an inherent sense of aesthetics, to add innovation to the world of fashion. Her designs specifically focus on details and finish in fabrics that are very carefully selected.
Drashta Sarvaiya
`Drashta` is a unique blend of art and fashion. The design philosophy that is distinctly modern has a touch of fun and quirk. The unique play of colours and precisely done hand textures set a new boundary for clothing in today`s day and age.
Deepti Toor
Deepti’s design philosophy is amalgamating fashion and art. Her creations precisely reflect different kinds of art forms. She includes like fine art, sculpture, performing art, paintings and many more. Her forte is developing forms, styles, silhouettes, surfaces and textured fabrics of various kinds.
Dev R Nil
Dev and Nil are well known for the effort they dedicate to detail and the unusual colour combinations they use in their creations. The duo excels in playing with beautiful textiles, subtle surface texturing and classic cuts. They are creating what could be called as “the wardrobe from the east”.
Digvijay Singh
Digvijay has the ability to beautifully blend various cross-cultural elements and aims to transform unpretentious materials like khadi into highly fashionable and desirable clothing. His collection, undoubtedly, is elegant and authoritative, full of attitude and opulence and yet graceful.
Geetika Gulia
Geetika believes in incorporating in her creations both aesthetics, as well as design aspirations based on challenging lifestyle of the generation. She excels in combining simplicity with surprising, each time she designs.
Jenjim Gadi & Jasleen Kochhar
Known for designing for both men and women, the duo believes in careful designing to ensure that the creations are original yet not bizarre. Their designs add a new look to the embroidery by combining various techniques to create classy Indo-western looks. Conceptual innovative embroidery, texturing and mixing fabric plus the stitching techniques form the strength of the designer duo.
Kallol Datta
Kallol draws inspiration from the past masters and visionaries like Cristobal Balenciaga and Madeline Vionnet. He believes that his garments belong to the forward thinking school of avant garde, which translates into well thought of, wearable pieces.
Kaushie Adiseshan
Kaushie is known for extraordinarily combining artistry and traditional workmanship, keeping in mind the importance of wear now/wear later potential. She very strongly believes in easy glamour. She always attempts to convey through her designs that looking fabulous shouldn`t be hard work.
Kiran Uttam Ghosh
Kiran Uttam Ghosh is known for her understated, well shaped silhouettes and characteristic textures. She pays good attention to detail and excels in providing dimensions to her outfits that are comfortable, stylish, constructed.
Kunal Rawal
Kunal Rawal is famous for his beaten clean garments. His collections comprise of ready to wear, semi formal and casual silhouettes. The designs include intelligent styling with full attention to detail.
Malini Agarwalla
Malini Agarwalla specializes in putting together rich embellishments of jeweled pieces, swarovski crystals, embroidery, beadwork and zardosi. These are interwoven with use of materials such as fibre, leather and various fabrics to create a fabulous array of formal and casual line of accessories for women.
Manish Gupta
Manish Gupta’s creations cater to both men and women and he strives to create clothes, which speak of dedication to the clients` needs. With classic embellishments, he aims at creating a timeless and an extremely personal wardrobe. His perfect ability to blend sophistication with commercial requirements makes his collection as exclusive as can be.
Manish Malhotra
Known for his contribution to Bollywood, Manish excels in styling, prêt, diffusion and the everlasting bridal and couture. This pioneer in the field of fashion, for the first time ever, will be seen presenting a couture show especially for Lux at the LIFW, taking its brand promise of ‘play with beauty’ forward’. Peaches, Strawberry, Ivory, Pinks are the flavour of the season for Manish.
Nachiket Barve
Nachiket’s designing philosophy is the luxury expressed in a contemporary, fresh and an extremely innovative way. The designer creates his own textiles using the finest materials to bring about an amalgamation of intricate techniques and clean streamlined silhouettes.
Nandita Mahtani
Nandita Mahtani’s brand ‘Ananya’ was the first to introduce `kurta’, to London. True Religion, Dragon Fly, ‘J’ Brand, E-vil, Cosa Bella, Rock - n - Republic, sunglasses by Linda Farrow and Ananya London are some of the brands that retail at Ananya, Mumbai.
Narendra Kumar
The NK line of for both men and women is based on modern cuts and silhouettes but integrates the luxurious aspects of specially woven Indian fabrics and hand crafted detailing to maintain a couture feel to the line.
Neelanjan Ghosh
Neelanjan Ghosh strongly believes in the philosophy that when you get the characters ready, they all become a part of a story that not only the collection narrates, so does each single piece. Every new collection that Neelanjan comes up with has the global village as its backdrop and eventually aims at creating its own exclusive genre.
Neeta Lulla
Neeta Lulla is known for brilliance in her creativity as she has draped various high profile celebrities and film stars. From the simple elegance of Sridevi in Chandni to the vibrant richness of Devdas, Neeta has another triumph in the epic film of Jodhaa Akbar that has received global acclamation for the stunning appearance of Hrithik Roshan and Aishwariya Rai Bachchan.
Sailex Ngairangbam
Sailex Ngairangbam has truly propelled and nurtured his vision in creating the powerful yet elegant woman. His signature brand SAILEX is primarily about simplicity with a twist and smartly brings forth cultivated European intelligence. His collection is an abstract manifestation of his ungoverned fantasies which are sparky , electric and absolutely flamboyant.
Nikasha Tawadey
Nikasha’s collection includes beautiful vintage prints and fabrics in refreshingly glamorous and trendy silhouettes. Her clothes beat the stereotype with an exuberant mix of colour and craft in wonderful fabrics often beaded, printed or embroidered.
Payal Singhal
Payal is more than able to satisfy the consumer demands of the contemporary South Asian woman. British Vogue Editor Dolly Jones aptly summed up a recent collection, “Gorgeous dresses for dressing up in downtown New York with just enough of the genuine Indian magic that designers all over the world try to recreate."
Pria Kataria Puri
Pria’s creations represent multicultural, multifaceted lifestyles of women today, who believe in elegant, luxurious, timeless piece of art as clothing. This designer firmly believes in the philosophy that says that ‘Elegance doesn’t mean being noticed, it means being remembered’.
Raakesh Agarvwal
Raakesh’s creations revolve around an intense ideology of creating a glamorous evening look – Intelligent and non-frivolous, a look perfect for the red carpet. The Raakesh Agarvwal label today is an intriguing mix of couture elements with the comfort and ease of prêt construction.
Radhika Agarwal
Radhika’s designs quite evidently depict a lifestyle. Her styles and designs statement is very rich, unique and alive. She uses very classy and expensive materials like oversized swarovski crystals, semiprecious stones, faux pearls, Czech Beads and chunky chains sourcing from all over the world giving an extraordinary look to her end product.
Rimzim Dadu
Rimzim is well known for using amalgamation of rich fabric textures, luxury with simplicity and playfulness with soberness, in her creations. She defines her designs as neither Indian nor western but absolutely global.
Ruchi Mehta
Ruchi Mehta’s collection incorporates the serenity of old ivory, silver, dove and coal, which is sprinkled with inimitable details in olive, twilight, ochre and sea. Cuff and collar details are exaggerated in stark contrast to the otherwise easy and flowing shapes. From essential coats to sharp dresses to soft saris, the collection aims to invade wardrobes everywhere.
Sabyasachi Mukherjee
Sabyasachi majorly excels in the use of indigenous methods like Bandhani, Gota work; Block printing, Hand dyeing in construction of modern silhouettes. He forayed into films by designing costumes for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film: “Black” which earned him rave reviews and also the national award for best costume designer.
Sanjay Malhotra
Sanjay Malhotra’s designs specifically target a self-assured, successful, honest and hardworking woman who has fine taste in life. He designs and produces some of the finest formal western and fusion clothing in India. His strength lies in innovative cuts, superior quality fabrics, and an impeccable finish.
Shyamal & Bhumika
Designer couple Bhumika and Shyamal Shodhan possess great passion an love for Indian embroideries, hand woven fabrics and age old craft techniques, that promises them success worldwide.
Sonali Dalwani
Sonali’s designs aim to create a fusion of International Styling and Indian ethenic designs, catering to the discerning New Indian Woman. Her accessory line has been widely accepted in the international and Indian markets.
Soumitra Mondal
This designer makes creative use of fine cotton, linen, rich traditional silk and hand woven fabric for each collection. Soumitra primarily focuses on wearibility along with simplicity in his designs. Both the background of textile and apparel design brings out the flavor of international design.
Sudhir Nayak & Tapash Biswas
Designers Sudhir Nayak and Tapash Biswas have worked together considering the `style is comfort` philosophy. Both have been working together for over four years now and have been successfully coming up with creatively new ideas carve a niche for themselves in the fashion world.
Urvashi Kaur
Urvashi Kaur is synonymous with class, luxury and inimitable style for women. Her work reflects the art of balancing various techniques that embrace the grandeur of design. Uncluttered silhouettes, innovative cuts and interplay of colours come alive in Urvashi`s creations fusing the realms of ethnic with the contemporary.
Viishvajeet Dheer
Viishvajeet has worked with various denim brands such as Parasuco, GF Ferre, Coast Weber & Ahaus and My Ass and assisted some classic Italian dressage lines. This designer excels interests lie primarily in innovation, decoration techniques, draping and graphics.
Vineet Bahl
Vineet Bahl has had some prestigious accolades come his way. With a fresh take on colours, silhouettes and fabrics, for Vineet, Fashion is about personal style which should be effortless.
Vivek Karunakaran
Vivek’s inspirations remain simple - tweaking what you see, into a modern contemporary statement. In spirit each design ensemble boasts of a new identity in a sense of perfection and uncomplicated simplicity.
Vivek Kumar
Vivek Kumar believes that in every person`s heart there is a neglected conqueror not been given due importance. The label is a blend of futurism and influence of old world charm, expressed through complex silhouettes, earthy rustic shades and chunky hand-made textures.
Wendell Rodricks
Wendell Rodricks collection primarily uses natural Indian fabrics, cut in a linear line, the silhouette is sheer, layered, draped and fluid. He focuses on concrete themes, experimental colour combinations, exotic fibre weaves, structural simplicity based on geometric Indian shapes and hand-painted details.
