Bhagalpur Bling Bling

Think high fashion and you most definitely don't think Bhagalpur or Muzaffarpur. Well, think again. Small-town India has sashayed on to the runway, thanks to a handful of designers bringing a fresh, unrehearsed ethnicity to fashion. Take Shubhra Chaudhary, for instance.

In the mad rush of the just-concluded Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week, this designer from Muzaffarpur, Bihar, stood out—no make-up, deglamorised attire. So did her creations. The sequins-crystal regime was dumped; instead she used hand stitches on clothes and hand-printed some others.

Some of the surface treatments were derived from time spent with her grandparents in villages in Bihar. There were the obvious connections too. "When I go to Dilli Haat, I see people going gaga over simple Madhubani paintings. Back home that's so commonplace," she laughs, adding: "I want to bring Madhubani painting into mainstream fashion."

Samant Chauhan has made a similar crossover. Chauhan's father worked in the eastern railway services as a cleaner and expected his son to move on to bigger things once his high school education was over. Instead, the shy 26-year-old from Bhagalpur wanted to get into fashion designing. Today, he stands vindicated.

His collection Kamasutra, showcased at WIFW, was one of the best seen on the runway at this year's event. Chauhan worked with Bhagalpuri raw silk to create Western streetwear.

"When growing up, I'd only find people using the material for home furnishing. I thought it would be interesting to do it on clothes," he says. Lots of texturing, interlacing and knits produced a layered look on a palette that was mostly pastel. Images from Vatsayayan's classic and Khajuraho were printed on the clothes. "He is going to be another (Rajesh) Pratap, See how he uses Bhagalpuri silk with digital prints. That's quite ingenious," noted buyer Sunil Sethi.
After the show, Tiziana Chardini of La Rinascente, an Italian brand, was seen hunting for Chauhan. "It's the first show where I saw such great use of indigenous craftsmanship on Western silhouettes," she said.

In some ways, these new kids on the block are following the big names of Indian fashion. Sabyasachi Mukherjee made a splash when he brought old world colonial Kolkata into his clothes. Meera and Muzaffar Ali brought Lucknowi handiwork into the drawing rooms of the rich and the famous. Or take Rajesh Pratap Singh.

His Rajasthan comes in to play through his careful jaliwork that intersperses his otherwise austere look. The references are not always autobiographical but they draw on individual experience and oblique cultural ties. Nikhil and Shantanu Mehra' Nihang collection, inspired by their Sikh roots and considered one of their best ever, came about when they heard singer Rabbi's album in 2005. "We are half-Sikh and when we went to the Golden Temple for research, it was also about tracing the traditions the religion offered," says Nikhil Mehra.

Before Chauhan and Chaudhary, another Bhagalpuri had made his mark. When Samar Firdos, 25, showed his collection at Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, buyers from Brown were amazed at the way he had threaded together divergent influences. Having studied at NIFT Chennai, Firdos had worked with leather workers there. So he got weavers from Bhagalpur, where his family runs a silk export industry, to weave together leather and tussar silk to come up with a new fabric. Called 'highbrow organic', the collection gave an interesting tweak to the country's already rich textile tradition.

There are others who want to break out from the instantly recognisable traditions of their state. Take Zubair Kirmani. There was not a hint of embroidery that his native hometown, Srinagar, is famous for. "That's so clichéd" he says. But Kashmir is woven into his work. His label is called Bounipun, which means chinar leaves. If you look closely at his white and black palette, you see shapes of the leaves being repeated. "If it's my state I am trying to put forward, I might as well do it well," he smiles.

So, the next time you hear anyone gripe about Indian fashion industry being a rip-off of the West, send him to the backwaters of Bihar.

Indian Express