Trend Tracker | Secret couture

Far from the razzmatazz of couture weeks is the closet of Malvika Singh, publisher of Seminar magazine. Collected with passion over more than 40 years, her 700-odd saris include cotton Jamdanis, many of them in patterns no longer woven on the looms of Varanasi, Upadas and Venkatagiris from Andhra Pradesh, the rare Bomkais of Orissa, Kanjeevarams from Chennai’s Kalakshetra and Maheshwaris that she says are “very special”.

Her first sari, an off-white Chanderi with a red and gold real zari border, was gifted to her when she was just nine years old; among recent additions is an aubergine Bengal cotton with a resplendent silver border that Singh says is a show-stopper whenever she wears it. Singh only shops now at exhibitions curated by handloom designers.

“I call it my regeneration collection,” says Singh. Her passion for textiles blossomed during the handloom revival in post-independence India; She was a part of the first art and crafts movement under freedom fighter Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, cultural activist Pupul Jayakar (who Singh calls her guru) and textile maestro Martand Singh.

Today there are, on the one hand, India’s multiplying couture weeks, which shrink the fascinating word “couture” to a commercial wedding bonanza. They misrepresent the uniqueness associated with bespoke clothing, diluting everything into an exhausting sea of crystals and glitter. On the other, is the unexplored terrain of India’s private closets. It is bespoke in some form or the other yet, quite distinct from mainstream fashion. It is secret because the owners usually don’t wear these clothes for design and fashion magazines, nor do they loan them out for fashion shoots to be worn by models—or for any form of public display. For instance, the Deepak and Daksha Hutheesing Collection assembled over four generations of the Hutheesing family includes garments worn by people—commoners to royals—from the early 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. This collection is not open for public viewing.

Umang Hutheesing could then be considered a likely private collector. He is from a royal family focused on art and crafts and is related to two families in Ahmedabad that are recognized collectors in their own right—the Lalbhais (who patronize the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum of art and archaeology) and the Sarabhais (who run The Calico Museum of Textiles).

Like mother-daughter duo Raman and Sunaina Khera, loyal customers of designer Gaurav Gupta. The Kheras have about 70-odd modern couture pieces by Gupta, collected over the last seven years. “Some ensembles are totally bespoke, never seen in any of Gaurav’s collections,” says Raman, as Gupta explains how he tweaks existing pieces for them or creates entirely new ones if they aren’t happy with the samples. Raman confesses that she can’t imagine a season without shopping from him. The clothes are stored in closets all over their large house, including the guest bedrooms.

Couture needs nurturing, says Singh. Her saris are hung apiece with at least one blouse option each in her walk-in wardrobe, a small room inside her south Delhi home. “I have a catalogue in my head. Nothing is forgotten. I take all of them out and select batches depending on what I want in a particular year or season,” she explains.

Collectors are of different persuasions. Some want to preserve a slice of history. Like the spectacular TAPI collection—more than 4,000-odd pieces collected from the mid-1970s—of Mumbai-based Shilpa Shah and her husband Praful Shah, the chairman of Surat’s Garden Silk Mills Ltd.

While the collection is housed in Surat and open to viewing for researchers by appointment, it is displayed from time to time through theme-based exhibitions announced on the TAPI website.

Senior designer and author Wendell Rodricks falls into the same genre. “I am collecting clothes and accessories for a museum on Goan clothing which include a gold embroidered Bishop’s mitre, a gold coin pendant that dates back to the Knights of Malta circa 1500s, many garments from the last century and jewellery,” he says.

Varma talks about Issey Miyake couture that art expert Lekha Poddar has been fondly preserving for “the love of art”, or how fashion entrepreneur Pernia Qureshi scours flea markets internationally for old pieces by St Laurent, American designer Halston or Valentino. He himself owns a $1,200 ( ₹ 71,290) Armani raincoat he bought when he could ill-afford it as a young student, as well as a crystal crown from the 1920s he found in a European flea market.

It is now locked up in a cupboard in the designer’s Delhi home, seldom displayed. Varma keeps the most delicate garments in muslin covers, like a Peshawari shawl he inherited 30 years back when his grandmother died, and the rest of the stuff in trunks or closets.

Hints of all kinds of treasures pop up in conversations—striking Jean Paul Gaultier gowns owned by a dancer who wears them with old temple jewellery, the gossamer ombre saris of the Nepal royals, designer Raghavendra Rathore’s wedding ensemble (a gold brocade bandhgala passed down six generations)—Orissa Ikats collected by classical dance guru Sonal Mansingh, politician and crafts promoter Jaya Jaitley’s textile pieces and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley’s rare Jamavar shawls. In these accounts, there is frequent mention of ensembles by couturiers Abu Jani & Sandeep Khosla, and the intricate garments by Pallavi Jaikishan.

Interestingly, personalized methods of preservation spike these anecdotes. “After internships at the National Costume Museum in Lisbon and The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, US, I learnt how to maintain museum quality garments. For now, my pieces are preserved in a climate-controlled room at our Panjim house,” says Rodricks.

Pramod Kumar K.G., founder and managing director of Eka Cultural Resources and Research, India’s only museum consulting company, has a different point of view. “We need our own methods of preserving our costumes. Western museum methodologies are not the answer. We need cultural and weather-based solutions,” he says. In India, he explains, air conditioning for old textiles is not the norm; even in museums or other places where old textiles are stored. Which is why air circulation, rolling out, turning around, ventilation, a dust-free environment and refolding of old clothes especially textiles, is imperative.

Mumbai-based Anjana Sharma, Rodricks’ muse and the chief operating officer and fashion director of Stylista.com, admired for her quirky boldness in dressing, has found a system to manage her “ever-expanding wardrobe”. Besides dozens of Rodricks’ garments, a biggish collection of Prada shoes and unusual Khadi saris by Rohit Bal, she treasures a kurta set in lovely shades of maroon made in the late 1980s by Rohit Khosla. “I have an organized walk-in wardrobe,” says Sharma.

Private collections are not just a sum total of designer couture. Mumbai’s well-known jewellery designer Jamini Ahluwalia, a monochromatic dresser, prizes vintage necklaces collected from antique markets across the world. “I have a collection of tribal silver started several years ago, including nomadic pieces from Gujarat and Rajasthan. One of my favourites is a horse tikka used for royal outings. There is also the family jewellery passed down from my mother with one-of-a-kind pieces,” she says, adding that she treasures two Parsi gara saris gifted by her father to her mother in the 1940s. “I never polish my silver because I love the tarnished look that gives it age and history,” adds Ahluwalia.

Irrefutably, most collectors have a background of privilege, if not wealth. But raised with aesthetic sensitivity they soon realize that inheriting a fortune and a few thousand glitzy costumes leaves them with a greater responsibility for keeping the story organic and alive. Many are driven by a personal passion, their personalities and their upbringing driving them.

“I grew up in Santiniketan, which honed my aesthetic understanding,” explains Ghose.

“We lived in a joint family where my grandfather painted watercolours and my father collected traditional arts and crafts much before collecting became fashionable and about commerce. This shaped my personality and my eye to find things I enjoy living with,” says Ahluwalia.

“I grew up taking cues from a mother who was steeped in ancient Indian history while she played the wife and travelling companion to a husband who was medical director of an American petroleum company. The die was cast when I married Praful Shah from Surat. My visits to Surat led me to explore its old Gaji, Tanchhoi and zari makers, discovering faint trail marks of a fascinating past when the town was an emporium of East-West trade,” says Shilpa.

A photograph shot in 2002 by acclaimed photographer Dayanita Singh as part of work for her memorable book Privacy (2003) reflects why collectors of private couture lean beyond wealth. This one is of Mumbai’s Jhaveri sisters—Nandita, Amrita and Priya with their parents.

“We grew up with beautiful things. My parents were obsessive collectors of art, jewellery, costumes, and textiles. My father was a jewellery designer who collected art before it was fashionable and my mother collected garments, Afghani, Persian and Kashmiri carpets and shawls. We have a collection of Aabhas from Kutch, sometimes a room is required to air them all, gota-ghagras and old Patan Patola saris,” says Priya Jhaveri, gallerist at Mumbai’s Jhaveri Contemporary, editor of 101: A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Arts and co-editor of UnZipped: Women & Men in Prostitution Speak Out. She is reluctant to debate if wealth makes bespoke clothing an easy sport, saying a collector must be assessed beyond wealth.

The genuinely committed add their personal signature to a decadent inheritance. Hutheesing’s ancient haveli (mansion) in Ahmedabad saw the launch of his personally designed Durbar Collection on World Heritage Day last year. “Gujarat is a strong bastion of textile culture. I have added a lot to my ancestral collections but which are not for sale. But imprinted with similar notions of bespoke and revivalism, I have created a new commercial collection,” says the royal-turned-designer-revivalist. The Hutheesing Design Co. was founded in 1881 by his ancestor Magganbhai but Umang’s Durbar Collection gives it a strategic design direction. As Raghavendra Rathore points out, “Hutheesing has tagged and catalogued each piece in an exemplary manner.”

Like Rodricks working on a museum for Goan clothing and Malvika Singh keen to initiate one for regeneration textiles, the private collector’s progress from a safe keeper to the lead player in the big archival game is crucial to sustaining lesser-seen couture.

Kumar K.G. agrees. “It is fantastic that some people have held on to these clothes, whatever the purpose or means of preservation,” he says, adding that collections like those of TAPI or Ahmedabad’s Calico museum are among the most organized, well-looked after and accessible to research scholars and students, as are the private collections of Darshan Shah of the Kolkata’s Weaver’s Studio.

Kumar K.G. doesn’t entirely agree. “Every old Phulkari does not need a museum, it can be draped over a sofa, admired and even worn. But garments that represent materials and fabrics of a particular era and reflect the material culture and rituals of our country, need to be preserved in museums,” he says, talking about some royal collections that also historically symbolize a particular occasion or festival, where the family is the custodian not just of the garment but also of the ceremony.

It leads to the question whether there exists—across these private collections—a strong visual of pan-Indian design? If so, it may be the stuff of an ambitious, amalgamated display at international museums like the Victoria & Albert in London or the costume institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It could be a captivating representation of India interpreted through couture, without folk-lorish or kitschy melodrama.

Like nothing the world has seen so far.