What Vivienne Westwood's India show did not get right
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. It wasn’t an April Fool’s Day joke after all. As soon as the invite to Vivienne Westwood’s 1 April show in Mumbai landed as a WhatsApp text, many thought it was a prank.
It was going to be the first-ever India show by the British brand, which doesn’t have a store in the country as yet. It was going to be a collection with Khadi as a highlight—experimentations with one Indian fabric on a global stage are unheard of. It was going to be traditional meets ready-to-wear meets couture meets punk, an extraordinary marriage the fashion world hadn’t seen in years.
It was all of this minus the extraordinary-ness. On Tuesday, while hundreds of attendees sat through an hour of summer heat and rain, with the front-row occupied by celebrities like Kareena Kapoor Khan and Janhvi Kapoor, over 60 looks were presented on a 166ft long runway with a scaffolding-clad Gateway of India as the backdrop. Creative head Andreas Kronthaler had stitched Khadi cotton, handwoven Chanderi silk, raw silk, sand Muga silk and wool into flowing dresses, power-shouldered coats, puff-sleeved kurtas and ghagras accentuated with Victorian era-esque hoop skirts.
All ideas that celebrated the fluidity of Indian textiles and the late Westwood’s love for history and punk gestures, but only on paper. The delivery was mediocre. A striped beige-grey Khadi dress came with puff sleeves, an angrakha-style tie-up detailing near the thigh and a pallu-like trail.
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