AFFLUENZA
Why buy Manish Arora?
HINDOL SENGUPTA
|
How Manish Arora got things that no other designer before him in India, or since, has managed.
|
Manish Arora made, for the first time in India, wearable modern art.
Photo: Sandeep Saxena
Rainbow of colour: Arora’s creation shown at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in March 2009.
Let me say this honestly: when I first saw Manish Arora’s clothes, I hated them. I couldn’t, didn’t understand them. I did not understand what they had to do with India. I did not understand why they would sell, who, indeed, would w
ear them?
I was not the only one. About three years ago, Outlook magazine ran a cover with Arora’s mug and the words “Who wears these clothes?” At that time, it seemed, a lot of people just didn’t get Manish Arora’s clothes. We were all — let’s say this loud and clear — wrong.
As it so happened, Manish Arora turned out to be the only great talent to have come out of India, who has in the best possible way taken Indian fashion to the world. He had, has, a distinct voice, a clear definition of style and a booming, crystal-clear voice of creativity that overshadows everything else. He is different. He stands out and he has turned the idea of Indian fashion as a billowy, swishy thing on its head.
Now if you walk into a Manish Arora store in India today, for instance if you stroll into his store at Delhi’s Emporio Mall, mostly likely you will be shocked that these are clothes. There’s too much colour, you will think, too much glitter, it’s too... shocking!
Breaking rules
This is not how India used to look at clothes (unless you count what Govinda wore in his films) and when Manish Arora was on the rise, at the turn of the millennium, even Bollywood had sobered up and become wearable cool. The other Manish, Manish Malhotra, ensured that everything Shah Rukh wore we could too. But Manish Arora, with his animated prints, his quirky T-shirt statements (he once wrote on a T-shirt “Do not pee here”), his zany digital designs broke every rule of what Indians thought was wearable.
We all thought he was mad, a show-off and a bit of a fashion vagabond until we realised that what he really was an artist. Manish Arora made, for the first time in India, wearable modern art. I say modern because one could equally argue that the great zardozi and chikan bridals of India are really art, albeit medieval.
Arora came at a time when every designer in the country — from Rohit Bal to JJ Valaya — were making fabulous, beautiful clothes but not really of path-breaking, eccentric originality. Arora, who has Ladies Tailor tattooed on one arm, brought that to the forefront. His shows were the most choreographed, fun, lively, brilliant pieces of production ever seen on Indian runways.
They had the most elaborate, cutting edge lighting and sound design. They were over-the-top but so was the designer. After his eponymous Manish Arora label, Manish Arora launched Fish Fry, which gobbled up colour, form and imagination from animation in a way I only experienced in my kiddie clothes filled with Disney dreams.
Only, Arora’s ideas were not childish. They were edgy (how I hate this word these days and how I never can seem to stop using it) and they were fun. They were radically different from anything we had seen or accepted as clothes. They were, as many then called the clothes, costumes more than clothes.
Now Indian fashion didn’t then, and doesn’t now to a degree, understand that everything that is shown on a runway does not necessarily sell in the same form in a store.
Many of the early converts to Manish Arora’s work understood this elusive idea. They got the fact that his rainbow of colours was not meant to be worn as costume. You are supposed to pick and choose and add from Manish’s rainbow dip to the greys and browns and blacks and make your life just that wee bit more exciting.
Naturally, the people who understood this first were not Indians. On a rain-drenched, growling Arabian Sea mid-afternoon on the NCPA terrace in Mumbai, where the fashion week was happening a few years ago, Manish Arora announced that he had been picked up to sell at Maria Luisa, the French boutique chain.
That was his turning point. He got, at that moment, the all-coveted foreign recognition, and from then on his fortune turned. He has had sweeping reviews in the London and Paris runways. Suzy Menkes and Hilary Armstrong have applauded him and he has been “discovered” as a rare original in his home country.
A bran name
That means this bald designer, who once roamed around in a black Ambassador and had one of the deliciously kitsch homes in Delhi, got things that no other designer before him in India, or since, has managed. He was able to transform his business into a brand that could be translated in a variety of consumables because it has a distinct, recognisable look and feel that differentiates it from everything else. He got a lucrative deal with Reebok to design sneakers — I believe one of the very few, if not the only independent “designer” to ever work with Reebok, he has now done a hip line of watches with Swatch and has a line of cosmetics with MAC.
All this is possible because Manish Arora understands the big idea of fashion; unique is everything.
This has always been a problem with Indian fashion. How many really steadfast, independent, distinct voices does it really have? The problem, of course, lies with its strength. Too much dependence on the bridal market meant most of the money came from similar clothes for all designers. You could tweak it a bit here, a bit there but overall it was still heavy bridals.
Manish Arora has changed all that. He has shown the way of doing very different clothes and yet being able to create a brand and a market for his clothes. He has, as Wikipedia notes, been called the John Galliano of India. That’s an interesting comparison but I believe that he is more like the Vivien Westwood of India. Not only truly an eccentric talent, as Galliano is, but also a path-definer in the history-altering way that Westwood is.
There was nothing of the sort in India or England before Westwood and Arora broke the shackles. That’s why you pay the prices you do for him.
Hindol Sengupta is Associate Editor, UTVi
Where to buy
Manish Arora Fish Fry,
3, Lodhi Colony Main Market,
New Delhi. Ph: +91-11-24638878, 24638898. E-mail: helena@threeclothingco.com
Manish Arora Fish Fry,
G-10, Crescent at the Qutab Lado Sarai, New Delhi. Ph: +91-11-29521582, 29521583. E-mail: gunita@threeclothingco.com
Fish Fry for Reebok
10-11, Garden of Five Senses, Said Ul Ajaib, New Delhi. Ph: +91-11-29534785, 29534759. E-mail: enenla@threeclothingco.com
Manish Arora Fish Fry,
3, SP Centre, The Courtyard, 41/44, Minoo Desai Marg, Colaba, Mumbai.
Price range: Rs.3,000-Rs. 40,000. Couture depends on individual pieces.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Magazine
