25 years since he started designing Haute Couture Week: How did you start? And how did you wake up and look at the world?

Indian designer Gaurav Gupta made his debut at Paris Haute couture Week on Thursday, almost 20 years after he launched his brand.

The prestigious event’s recognition of Gupta signals the growing international status of a couturier who has long been beloved by his Bollywood clientele. The designer’s sculptured creations have been worn by A-list stars including Cardi B, Lizzo and Kylie Minogue.

At last year’s Oscars, rapper Megan Thee Stallion donned a slate-blue, body-hugging gown, custom-designed by Gupta, that featured a dramatic train flowing out like delicate waves. He said at the temporary showroom near the Champs-lysées in Paris that the media coverage was beautiful.

Gupta and his team have been working on the couture presentation in Paris for the past six months. The label has also been preparing for buyers’ visits to the Paris showroom where its eveningwear collection, which is currently sold via Moda Operandi, will be on display. The American retailer Neiman Marcus is also set to offer the brand’s designs, and Gupta relishes the challenge of expanding his presence in the West.

“It was very dramatic,” he said. For the next two hours, I couldn’t sleep because I was just looking outside and crying. We were just this couturier, and this is history happening in front of my eyes. It has been 25 years since I started working in fashion.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/gaurav-gupta-paris-haute-couture-week/index.html

Gaurav Gupta’s “Indian at its core”: a Concept-driven Model for High-Fidelity Fashion

After graduating from the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Gupta founded his label. His brother Saurabh joined the operation early on. They grew the business and opened five boutiques in New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, andGurugram and regularly dressed Bollywood stars.

Gupta’s high concept collections came in more subdued tones, subverting what was being sold in the Indian market at the time. Converting what he showed on the runway into commercial sales took some time to figure out.

Being a very concept-driven brand in a very traditional market was not easy. Over the years, he has found a balance of how to make Wearable Concepts.

Merging what it calls “indigenous Indian construction and embellishing techniques,” the label describes itself as “Indian at its core.” The sari gown is one of the most popular items by Gupta. The traditional Indian garment is made out of a rectangular fabric wrapped around the body in a variety of styles and is very sexy because of Grecian-style detailing and knotting.

Gupta said that they were going to be stocked with the best players in the market. “It’s been a nice progression of having celebrity collaborations — cultural collaborations, is what I’d like to call them — and (in parallel) have our agents do sales. There’s a plan that goes on all the way up.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/gaurav-gupta-paris-haute-couture-week/index.html

Gupta-Paris Haute Couture Week at the Bellacorte Museum in Las Palmas, Chile, from 1 to 30 September 2003

The world was expanded when zero was discovered. Time was no longer linear,” Gupta said, adding that explorations of space and time inspired the collection.

There were a lot of silhouettes in the beginning of the runway show. swan-like wings that were twisted around the models’ shoulders and hips were featured in several looks. Each dress was embroidered with crystals and was made with Indian hand-woven tissue fabrics that were sculpted using the label’s embellishing techniques.

An eruption of indigo, electric-blue pieces followed. Strong statements in their own right, each look was designed head-to-toe in the same hue and paired with matching legging boots that seemed to fit the models like a second skin.

There was a parade of nude-illusion dresses that featured black adornments strategically placed over the sheer, skin-toned tulle. Silver, black and neon yellow dresses followed by pops of color. A succession of black and gold creations then concluded the show.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/gaurav-gupta-paris-haute-couture-week/index.html

Sam Smith’s Look of the Week: From a Dog’s View to a Grand Unified View of Indian Design and Artisanity

“There’s a sense of fluid form, maximalism, the techniques and craftsmanship — all of that is Indian. I want to change the perception of how Indians are viewed.

Featuring the good, the bad and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is a regular series dedicated to unpacking the most talked about outfit of the last seven days.

The air used to inflate circus-inspired designs has created a cartoonish, ballooning sense of volume, which has already become a HARRI trademark. Striking as they are stationary, the pieces are made for movement. At the label’s Spring-Summer 2023 London Fashion Week presentation, Pillai enlisted dancers and mini-trampolines to demonstrate the clothes in motion. Smith, teetering on a pair of custom Valentino platforms, strutted across the red carpet in similarly mesmeric form.

It took the musician four days to make his look, and it was one of his most ambitious garments to date. The designer had only stuck to inflating the lower body in previous collections. The shapes are from Kai, Pillai’s dog. He told Good Morning Britain that he thought about it from his dog’s point of view. We saw him from a small, short angle. (Like a) distorted body image.”

While Smith may not have taken home a Brit Award, they certainly still left an impact. To many fashion fans, the outfit resembled that of another powerful gender-defying dresser. The wide-leg vinyl jumpsuit David Bowie wore during his international tour in 1973 was designed by the late Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto. The garment was called “Tokyo Pop” and made the artist look bow-legged whenever he crouched. The stage presence of Aladdin Sane and Stardust was built using larger-than-life geometric creations created by Yamamoto.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/sam-smith-brit-awards-outfit/index.html

Gender-fluidity isn’t everything: a simple approach to androgyny can be as simple as shapes

Similarly, Pillai’s designs are a hypnotic reminder that subversion isn’t the only path to gender-fluid fashion. There are ways in which androgyny can be as simple as shapes.