Jenjum Gadi is probably the most popular name in fashion to come out of the North Eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh and was recently in the news for having been the couturier to design uniforms for the first-ever Delhi Police Women’s Band. He has now also been commissioned to design the uniform for a special commando unit in Delhi. The designer is already a favourite with quite a few Bollywood celebs including Malaika Arora, Sonakshi Sinha, Arjun Kapoor and Milind Soman and it must have therefore come as quite a shocker to some of his fans when he returned to designing in 2017 (after a sabbatical) and decided to only focus on menswear alone.
“I studied fashion designing at Wigan & Leigh in New Delhi and launched my first label Koga in 2008, just ahead of Lakmé Fashion Week that year. I continued to design till a creative block hit me in 2015 and I returned to Arunachal Pradesh for inspiration,” begins the designer who now releases edits under his eponymous label Jenjum Gadi.
“Inspired by the North East and the amazing weaving, textile and handicraft traditions here, I returned to Delhi in 2017 and began releasing menswear collections, season after season. This routine however took a beating in 2020 when the pandemic hit and we went under successive lockdowns. The back to back lockdowns led to a situation where I didn’t see the point in doing full-fledged collections anymore, instead I chose to keep myself busy with smaller collections, all of which I collectively named ,” explains the designer, who is Galo by ethnicity and comes from the town of Tirbin in the newly-formed district of Lepa Reda in Arunachal Pradesh.
Jenjum chose to repeat particular styles that did well and built his later capsule edits on those popular styles and silhouettes. “You can call it playing safe, but it worked for me. I’ve done the same with my latest capsule collection which was developed for Vayu — a boutique showcasing Indian crafts and designs in Delhi and Rishikesh, Uttarakhand,” adds the couturier who was seen in a cameo in Nicholas Kharkongor’s Axone (2019) that released on Netflix.
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The new capsule edit focuses on breezy, easy and relaxed summery silhouettes in white and off-white and sticks to a resort theme, keeping in mind the climate of the season. The collection is completely in cotton but most garments feature at least two types of cotton fabric in the same piece. “I like playing with texture and so, using different types of cotton fabrics keep the garment interesting to touch, feel and wear. Most of my garments are gender neutral and free size and I stick to the same silhouettes — kurtas, jackets, bandis (Nehru jackets), shirts, kurta-pajama sets and sherwanis. And while most of the edit sticks to whites and off-whites, there are also blacks, corals, wines, reds, grays, blues, pinks and greens,” Jenjum tells us.
“Next up, I am working on a capsule collection inspired by the Assamese gamocha (scarf/dupatta). It’s going to be largely in red and white, but will feature motifs from all across the North East. I am also working on expanding my festive collection from 2019, Ajen (meaning ‘friendship’ in Galo), which I launched just before the first lockdown was announced,” the designer concludes.
INR 4,500 onwards. vayuonline.com and jenjum.com
romal@newindianexpress.com
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