'Alice in Wonderland’ can be rightly called a pre-loved theme in the sartorial world. Everyone from Vivienne Westwood to Donatella Versace among a slew of other designers has made Alice—the little girl Lewis Carroll conjured up and gave an identity to beyond the literary space—their muse. In the FDCI x Lakme Fashion Week that concluded in Mumbai last week, Gurugram-based Rina Singh, founder of the brand Eka, brought alive Alice and her friends enjoying a tea party on the runway.
In Eka’s show ‘...It’s only a dream’, Alice—it could very well have been you, or me—tumbled down the rabbit hole (read: the pandemic) and was now in a happy zone, ready to face the world. “It was this big fall that we all went through [the pandemic], and it was dark as that time was difficult to deal with. But now that we are coming out of it, what are we looking at!? That is why I created this imaginary ‘Tea Party’ where half the people wake up from slumber, and when they see the world moving around them is when they try to connect with the world… that is the beauty I wanted to capture through the show,” says Singh.
Back with a bang
COVID hampered businesses across domains, but it was a period of unprecedented adversity especially for the fashion industry across the world. Apart from brands suffering major losses, adopting digital practices and moving into a digital format amid the pandemic also meant losing out on the tactility that clothing is associated with. Fashion enthusiasts also complained about missing the extravagance of a physical runway show. “I actually wanted to do a physical show this time because you don’t feel the story is complete unless you present it on the ramp,” shares Singh. She adds,
“Interacting with the audience or having people walk around in the characters that you imagined in your head is, it was like a culmination of the whole season. I was actually looking forward to the opening of this whole scenario, again. It is very optimistic and I think it brings a lot of joy to a lot of people to see fashion as a part of their lives again.”
Weaving stories through fabric
A sartorial storyteller, that is what Singh can be rightly called… It is also what she prefers. “I always lived in stories all my life, otherwise life can be very bitter,” she shares. “So I think, to have that imagination to lead you in the way of your life also is such a respite from the world, which can become extremely difficult to deal with at times.”
‘….It’s only a dream’ saw Singh bringing forth pixelated floral motifs in jamdani, soft cottons, and silks in contemporary silhouettes. “I can’t draw like the person who originally made jamdani; this is how a jamdani from the 21st Century is going to look like in the future,” Singh mentions. Ask her who her clothes are for, and she concludes, “I think in everyday life, a lot of people want to communicate themselves to the world through their clothes, or they want to reserve a lot of them from the world.
So, a lot of imagination comes to work and there, I think, clothes like Eka’s fit in beautifully. Because we allow the people to wear the clothes and not vice versa. Whoever you are, I would want you to get a piece of Eka and feel like ‘this is how I want to talk to the world’. I think it is my superpower as a creative person, as a designer.”