Spotlight on Anita Dongre
Mumbai-based designer Anita Dongre, who is credited with having created India’a first organic clothes line last year, has been showcasing an extended version of that collection at the ongoing Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week.Dongre’s clothes are made of eco-friendly fibres, textiles and natural dyes. While the Grassroots haute couture collection - an extension of last year’s line of the same name - features unique clothes like bamboo jackets, she also has a new pret collection called Inter Pret.
“Inter Pret is my new line of simple off-the-rack clothes - mostly tunics, kurta tops, dresses, linen shirts, dhoti pants - for the contemporary Indian woman. It has no bling, but is full of colour. I have used bright colours like yellow, indigo, blue, red and dark green. I have created an entire line in Indigo, a carry over from last year. The cuts are straight and minimalist to suit my spring-summer styles.”
Inter Pret relies on traditional dyeing techniques like bandhani, leheriya and block prints from Rajasthan. The clothes, dyed with natural vegetable colours, are embellished with chikankari embroidery from Lucknow.
“This time, I commissioned a special variety of crushed georgette for my clothes with cotton and silk blends. I have used it extensively for my Inter Pret collections. The idea is you can crush a dress, stuff it into a duffel bag, unpack it and wear it again without ironing it. The silk gives it the sheen and cotton the comfort. I had the modern working woman - someone like myself who travels a lot - in mind when I created the crushed look,” Dongre said.
The designer is popular in Bollywood and her clothes are worn by many stars such as her friend Shabana Azmi. “I usually don’t design their clothes on the sets, I do their personal wardrobes,” Dongre said. However, she breached her code for Shabana. “Shabana loves my ethnic salwar-kurtas and she picks them from my stores. I collaborated with her on clothes in her last movie ‘Sorry Bhai’.”
