Turning gorgeous wedding gowns into a rage in this country, designer Mandira Wirk’s two decades of an illustrious journey is interspersed with many a first in terms of trends. Celebrated for phenomenal draping, sensuous cuts, elegant detailing, and exquisite embroidery, Mandira’s eponymous label has been adorned by several Bollywood A-listers including Deepika Padukone, Anushka Sharma, Sonam Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari and Malaika Arora among others. The feted designer has now come up with her first Indo-Western range, Kefi, which has a rich display of her signature embroidery designs inspired by regal Indian bijouterie.
The collection embodies vibrant jewel tones such as ruby red, sapphire blue and emerald green combined with intricate and quirky hand embroidery featuring pearls, sequins, beads along with intricate floral borders. The silhouettes are young and playful and include peplums, sheer organza embroidered jackets and draped saris and skirts in rich, lightweight, and flowy fabrics like crepe, satin, organza and chiffon. “This is our first Indo-Western collection and it’s also very time-appropriate, especially when people want value for money. If somebody takes a three-piece, for example, they can be worn separately and together as well,” explains Wirk.
Though the designer is known for couture wear, keeping the global pandemic situation in mind, she has also explored resort wear, something she has wanted to do for many years. “Resort wear is something that can be worn throughout the year and is also easy on the pocket. We’ve also invested a lot of time in print development and done a lot of abstract and floral prints in both of our resort wear collections,” she tells us. Wirk is also experimenting with a lot of natural fabrics, like mulmul, chiffon and satin.
Known for exquisite embroidery work, Mandira has always adopted the ‘less is more’ approach for her designs. She does a lot of French knots, intricate yet minimalistic embroidery and avoids using too much glitter. “It’s all about playing with cuts, and embroidery placements, which makes an outfit very versatile yet elegant and timeless,” she adds. Mandira has also embraced sustainability by stopping the use of plastic altogether and using fabric waste to design bags and masks. “We’re also continuously trying to incorporate organic fabrics in our current as well as all future collections,” she quickly points out.
With the pandemic in no hurry to go away, Wirk is moving towards versatile clothing and coming up with collections that can be used in multiple ways. Her three upcoming collections include an Indian print line comprising a lot of fun kurtas, shararas, tunics, dresses and jumpsuits, a Western resort wear range, where vibrancy will be the keyword with interesting sleeves and different necklines, and a limited edition drop that will have only 10-12 styles, and maybe just two pieces of those silhouettes. The fabrics for the limited edition would be luxurious and colours will include greys, pinks, sage green, gold and ivory.
“In the Indian print line, there’ll be interesting patchworks as well as a lot of cut and stitch of different prints. We’re going to have happy pastels for both our Indian drop and resort wear,” she tells us.
Price on request. mandirawirk.in
sharmishtha.g@newindianexpress.com
Twitter: @sharmidas