Wow.

London Fashion Week is over (the Marc by Marc Jacobs collection was pure cuteness, but I'm not commenting on it, there are enough people to do that- those flippy little skirts! Those layers! That whole collection, so much more fun than his pointy-collared New York one!). This post is actually just the result of plain surprise at the last show of that week I'd expect to have liked.

I never thought this would happen. Past expressions of my feelings in re: Indian designers and the clothes they put out have, for the most part, been ones of ho hum and plain annoyance at the tacky, over-embellished rubbish that gets put on runways, more often than not grossly overpriced to the level where I once converted some prices into GBP and $ and found that some crappy wannabe-trendy skirt from some idiot out of NIFT was going for the same price as a Chanel clutch. And while I am a skirtgirl to the core (poofy, crazy, pretty, bring ‘em on!), I still know which one of the two I’d rather have. About the only Indian designer who ever managed to fire my interest to any degree was Sabyasachi Mukherjee, mainly because he was the first one to actually acknowledge the idea that a brain might be something a woman would actually like to acknowledge having when she gets dressed. All the others seem to be lehnga-designing Punjus targeting fat cat daddy-of-the-bride types, and while that’s fine, it still means I’m happier rooting around for my clothes on a streetside or in a basement than in a shop because I don’t want to wear anything that looks even remotely like what’s up there. Like ‘Indian design’ has to be synonymous with gratuitiously garish, badly-styled and just plain fugly. Or folksy and ethnic and again, a bit blah.
Which is why I am, to put this politely, gobsmacked on getting a look at the pictures of Manish Arora’s show at London Fashion Week. I wasn’t such a fan of last season’s look or of his work in general, it was a little too calculated and gimmicky to really seem fun, but by George, if this is what a few seasons in London leads homegrown designers (ours) to produce, I can only say: Mr. Arora, STAY THERE! I looked at it expecting more trash, but it’s great to the level of being stupendous- at least on the runway, since I am not looking at the clothes up close and (insert sniff and sigh) won’t have the chance to do so. It isn’t embroidery-piled-on crap, the stuff actually looks potentially flattering not to mention massive loads of fun to wear (grey, nasty winter days can’t possibly seem so nasty if one of those mad prints is on you). He actually seems to be looking at what's going on around him (latex leggings- I swear I saw those somewhere else too) instead of going off on some bizarro aimed-at-Bollywood trip, and the 60s-ish shapes and subdued-but-shiny (subdued compared to last time, anyway) prints are gorgeous. And I covet those gold shoes, though not as much as I do Queen Michelle’s gold Oxfords on Kingdom of Style.
Maybe they should just import the entire Indian design lot to London and keep them there. If they can’t make actual wearables, I’m sure there are enough and more NRIs in the market for a Bollywoody wedding lehnga to keep them all afloat.