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When the edge cuts

Designer Rehane speaks on passions and places

BOLD IN BLUE A model flaunts a Rehane outfit

She started designing clothes at 13 because she was tired of wearing hand-me-downs as the third sister. But with her own designer label, Rehane is now out with her "watershed collection", to be shown at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week.

Rehane asserts she is not a Chennai-based designer and instead a global designer. But with a flagship store on "Chennai's Bond Street, Khader Nawaz Khan Road" and with no outlet in Delhi, she is proud of her base. In her autumn-winter collection, raw energy replaces her signature pastels and bubblegum essence. She claims the collection is about pathos. But instead it is about power. It is not a calm collection. Dresses are crowded with wool embroidery and bevelled glass. The colours, midnight blue to vermilion, are menacing and torrid. Dragonflies and spider web motifs emboss the clothes. She underscores, "I am an artist and not a business person." This collection, she says, took "my whole career to create." Her intentions are made clear during the fittings at hotel Samrat. "I don't want you to look conventionally sexy," she tells her models, "you will look dishevelled, no one should think you are attractive."

Break free

Rehane asserts that she is intentionally trying to break out of the Marilyn Monroe niche. Here Monroe discards sweet seduction for bold intimidation. What is the reason for the change? Speaking with an attractive carelessness she says, "I am used to calling the shots. I don't want to succumb to what someone else wants. People ask if you can do something else, the question is, can they accept something else!" Rehane is confident that her clients will accept the new look. She says it is a misconception that Chennai is a conservative market of "Maamas and Maamis". They are conservative in spending but not in style. She says she can only manage to design for one fashion week a year, as otherwise it is too hectic. There is no difference between the two fashion weeks but wishes, "That like all normal countries we had only one fashion week a year, it is simply not sustainable."

"Delhi is a market of hype, you have to be seen `mumaaing' (she air kisses). Delhi is very loyal to its designers. It is `Be Delhi, Buy Delhi' not `Be Indian, Buy Indian'!"

NANDINI NAIR

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