From the dusty lanes of Mubarikpur village in Rajasthan to drawing on the myriad colours and cultures of India to create a unique voice like Raw Mango, Sanjay Garg has come a long way. His recent collection - Other - has further established his credentials as someone who thinks outside the box and is not afraid to ruffle some feathers.
The launch features a campaign that sees models wearing oversized ceramic eyes with their faces painted a surrealistic red or green, exploring Garg's 'supernatural as natural' theme with a very Daliesque touch.
Unsurprisingly, the campaign has received mixed reviews on the internet. While some hail it for being 'bold' and 'abstract', others call it 'disturbing' and 'scary'. Garg says, "To be honest, this phase or idea of surrealism has stayed with me from Day One of the brand. Also, why should we be hung up about a particular idea of beauty? My idea of beauty encompasses the entire country. I have been consciously trying to break the purist point of view."
His words remind one of Salvador Dali's famous lines: "Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision." Garg agrees, and says that as a country we need to be more tolerant of different points of views.
Best known for its luxurious fabrics and beautifully crafted, hand-embroidered pieces, Raw Mango usually sticks to classic themes, but with a twist. Garg can be credited with disrupting big Indian couture labels’ formulaic embroidery fashion and creating new conversations in textile, culture and politics through a range of saris, garments and objects. With help from karigars across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Varanasi, Raw Mango has defined a new aesthetic vocabulary.
Anything but conventional, this newest range, Other, is a hyper surreal, subversive collection—almost an art exhibit—a sharp departure from the brand’s nostalgic, referencing small town imagery. At the same time, it gives a subtle nod to his homeland in the form of the bright floral odhnis.
But make no mistake, there’s nothing traditional in this collection and the theme is artistic and dark. "The pieces - including saris, coats, palazzos, jackets, kurtas, shirts, skirts and more - boast the usual aesthetic with 'acidic' colours and prints," says Garg.
He throws a surprise with the designs and the silhouettes here. Or maybe, it is what a pandemic-weary mind with a year stuck in sweats needs. Hand-woven patterns are replaced with digital prints inspired from nature and the traditional Raw Mango silhouettes such as shararas and lehenga-cholis make way for coordinated sets and separates. There are oversized jackets, wide pants, kurtas, long and short placket shirts in a range of hues.
While the theme is surreal with the painted models and the arid background, the soft silhouettes, and the bright, feminine floral prints add contrast with baby pinks, ivory or neon yellow. All this exhibits conflicting forces at play, not unlike the pandemic, which brought introspection into our lives, and in Garg’s case, it resulted in Other. “Through this collection, we address what we have within. It explores the idea of self-acceptance. It challenges the supernatural as natural, the surreal as real. At the same time, we are not looking at the foreign sense of ‘other’ as menacing, but rather as Nature’s survival instinct,” the designer says.
Never afraid of change, surrealism and beauty co-exist for Garg. “Let me end with one of the comments we received on our social media page regarding the collection: Art comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable,” he signs off.