Saturday 15 November 2014

Wills India Fashion Week Round Up - ATSU, Alpana & Neeraj

Atsu SS15

ATSU - At Atsu, it was all about pastels, light embellishments, plumage and architectural silhouettes. The designer was having fun mixing textures and shapes. He was inspired by his travels to the far east which explains how some of the looks were reminiscent of traditional Japanese clothing. Case in point: a light purple zip dress with sleeves like that on a geisha's gown and a peach number featuring sculptural, rounded sleeves like that on a samurai's armour. The collection mainly comprised of dresses - some were romantic and full skirted, some were mid thigh with very sculptural sleeves and some that were in between with very lovely embroidery. On the whole, Atsu didn't use very heavy embroidery (minus the cape that closed the show)which gave the clothes an element of lightness. My most favourite look was a flowy gown (kind of like a night gown), held together with a bow tied on the waist, featuring beautiful ostrich feathers on one side paired with cropped pants.

Alpana & Neeraj - Top marks to the duo for being brave enough to experiment with such crazy clothes and doing a great job at it. This was yet another Japanese inspired collection but not based on the usual geisha and samurai style clothes. More like the country's obsession with stuff like Hello Kitty, Anime, Manja and Harajuku. Silhouettes were very sculptural here too with giant bows, scalloped hems and embroidered floral patches adding a dramatic flair. Although it was great to see such fun creativity on the runway, I couldn't help but wonder how many of them would actually make it into real life. The pants and the full skirted ball gown style dress - yes, I can see those but most of them had way too much going on and seemed a little restrictive for my liking. A massive bow right across the bust on one dress could hardly be functional and the part bronze, part white dress with a bow right above the knees made me feel the model will fall any minute. Designers do need to constantly experiment, but one shouldn't forget that a collection needs to also be commercially viable. Lets hope next time Alpana & Neeraj strike a good balance between the two.

Alpana & Neeraj SS15
 

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