Chennai: Celebrated designer Suket Dhir’s latest edit is finally now in the city

With a longing to reinvent Indian artisanal techniques, Suket Dhir launched his sustainable eponymous label in 2011, six years after he graduated from National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi in 2005. It was this zeal that eventually won him the coveted International Woolmark Prize for Menswear five years later, in 2016. Since then, he has been featured on the covers of international magazines and dailies and is also the only designer in the world — whose ensemble for Nobel laureate Abhijeet Bannerjee — has been selected for permanent display at the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden.

The designer, who is a favourite with celebs like Mira Nair, Karan Johar and Jim Sarbh, to name a few; is now a permanent exhibit at Collage and we spoke to him to discover more about his latest collection, He for She — The Royal Within, that’s now on display in the city.

“I work with a few main fixtures — animal motifs, miniature paintings and a few other design concepts that we’ve developed in-house. The collections on showcase in Chennai are all eclectic and have a humorous twist. They’re iconic essentials and collectibles, mostly made in handwoven banarasi silk in a combination of miniatures and brocades. The Royal Within was inspired from miniature paintings. We’ve reimagined what maharajas and maharanis would be doing if they were still ruling today. Back in the day they chose leisure activities like hunts (which have inspired a few designs) and we’ve replaced the hunt with golf, assuming that’s what they would be doing today, instead! The miniatures are inspired by the kangra-style of miniature paintings,” begins the designer; who was born in Banga, Punjab and raised in Delhi, the city he currently works out of.

“Brocades are usually statement pieces, but we decided to wash the brocades in different ways to make the fabric more versatile. The idea was to make these clothes repeatable. Instead of it being a piece that you just wore once, we wanted it to be a piece that you wear often — which is also our philosophy. I don’t want to make clothing that lies in wardrobes. I want them to be worn. I want people to combine and juxtapose their shapeless and anti-fit clothes with my very shaped and tailored pieces. The different pieces from the collection can be worn together as ensembles or even as separates,” he continues.

The collection takes inspiration from men’s wardrobes. In typical Suket Dhir style they’re meant to be effortless. Being a quintessential menswear designer who then moved to womenswear, Suket has always worked with that element in his mind. “I basically make menswear for women and I have my wife to thank for this. She used to always steal all my clothes when I was focusing only on menswear. I therefore, decided to launch the He for She collection with menswear silhouettes tailored to women’s sizes,” explains the designer.

The silhouettes in the collection stick to the designer’s well-known jackets, bombers, trousers, shirts and kurtas; while the colour palette plays between cobalts, shocking tangerines, teals, whites and two different types of brocades — white gold and antique gold. Most of the pieces are in banarasi silk, but there’s also some khadi mulmul, muga silk and mulberry silk included. Next up, the designer is working on collections featuring brocades focusing on the kimkhwab, tanchoi, and kadwa style of weaves. 

INR 7,650 onwards. At Collage.

romal@newindianexpress.com
@elromal