Steel in the Fabric

For a long time, the fashion world could not understand why Gaurav Jai Gupta was weaving metal into textiles. But he feels vindicated now

It is melancholic-the portrait of an old lady in a nun’s habit, her hands folded across her chest. The original hangs in Musée du Louvre in Paris. This is an imitation, done in a day’s time. On the runway, as the lights come on to illuminate the portrait, the old lady marks her presence as the inspiration for Gaurav Jai Gupta’s collection for Delhi’s Wills Fashion Week.

Tamara Moss, a model, walks down the runway in an austere striped skirt and a blue croptop, the colours all drawn from the nun’s habit. Blue and white. Shades alternating between the two. Cold and light. Calm and composed.

One early morning eight months ago, Gupta was driving out of town for a hill station break when he saw a nun on the side of the street near a Tibetan refugee colony in Delhi. She was clad in a Missionaries of Charity sari. Since he was speeding down the deserted road, the sight was gone in a flash. “It wasn’t static. It was a white sari with blue stripes,” he says of what he saw that morning. “All ideas for me originate in such ways.”

The image of the nun stayed with him, making its way into his subconscious. “It was peaceful. It represented hope. In this chaotic world where front pages of newspapers are full of news that is deeply disturbing, that image was so calm. As if it could be a solution.”

He found himself looking for pictures of nuns online, and there began his research on the Missionaries.

Gupta, 31, is a textile designer and that’s what his brand Akaaro—‘me’ in Sanskrit—has become famous for ever since he started doing fashion shows in 2011. Even today, though, he is mistaken for the other Gaurav Gupta, a flamboyant fashion designer of costume-like clothes.

Gupta works with an eclectic mix of materials. In a large hall, there is a loom with colourful threads being woven into fabric. There are just a few days to go for Delhi’s fashion week, for which he must get his Mode-rate collection together. Apart from garments, the hall has a pair of gumboots that he will later cut to make them look like sandals.

On his laptop, he goes through a list of songs. One hears a crashing of waves, a whoosh through a forest. All of a sudden, the room seems full of mint leaves. “I think musically,” he says, “I can see when I listen to music.” It goes back to his teen years. In Class 10, he had begun listening to Ghalib’s ghazals. Sometimes, he would dance all by himself in a dark room. “I could dream with sound and image.”

He says he does not have a definitive taste in music. He listens to everything. On most evenings at his house in Hauz Khas, Delhi, he listens to music he has stumbled upon.

Gupta says he does not know what he wants, but knows he is headed big. All these years as a developer of textiles—and he has done interesting work by weaving copper and steel into his fabric— he was looking for respect. His work was dismissed as lacking in the aesthetics of structure, drape and cuts. But he would always introduce himself as a ‘textile designer’, and it took display after display at fashion weeks for his ‘engineered’ fabrics to get critical recognition.

Gupta grew up in Rohtak in an upper middle-class family. Theirs was an old huge house with many rooms. He describes his as an average Indian childhood— playing cricket in gullies, being part of street groups, going to school and doing homework. His father was mostly travelling on business, the family’s own, and let his sons have their own way with education and choices. Supported by his father, Gaurav attended the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi and later went to London for a degree in textiles.

He may not look like a designer, he says, but it’s the work that’s important, not the person. Reviews of his recent SS14 show have given him a new confidence.

He is more dismissive of people now. It is the audacity of recognition.

Talking to a senior designer, he tells her how he hasn’t seen her work and would not be looking out for it either since she isn’t a textile designer . From someone who has always seen himself as an underdog and complained about the apathy of the fash frat towards innovation, this sounds a little ungracious.

But fashion, to Gupta’s mind, is a strange world. There’s too much politics and this restrains creative expression. Commercially, he is yet to break even. But it is getting better, he says.

“I want respect,” he says.

“I like showing people my work. My work is my soul.”

But that’s not unusual. In this world, everything is a product of the soul. So designers say.

Gupta’s needs and wants are few. He doesn’t have a fancy car or phone. He was brought up by a father who didn’t believe in excess, he says. He loves what Rajesh Pratap Singh does. It has all the elements he himself likes to work with—music and drama, for example. “But I don’t own his clothes,” he says, “He is more of a product designer. I could be his lover. I like his work so much.”

So far, Gupta has done four seasons at fashion weeks. He describes his previous body of work as ‘heavy’. This time round, he felt light and it’s apparent in his work. “Now I am taking it easy,” he says, “Things will come to me now. I was thinking too much initially. But this time, it was like the stroke of a brush.” There was applause during the show as models came down the ramp in his work. There was a dark element too. It is something that’s in him, he says.

With steel, he has created garments that look powerful.

“I like steel,” he says.

When a priest told him he should visit Vishnu temples across the country, he started to think. Fascinated with Vishnu’s Matsya avatar, he pictured the fish in water and the shimmer of the water.

It’s an effect seen in the layers of zari and steel in his ‘engineered’ sari, a design that has been getting a lot of attention.

“I like quality,” he says, “I don’t like average things.”

There is this conflict. He calls himself an average person, but detests ‘average work’ . In the very next instance, he says average is important.

For now, he is trying to find his peace. It will come, he says. “Like how it goes flat on an ECG screen. I want it like that.”

Gupta doesn’t know if he has an ego but he would like to have none. It is a struggle. And he is still complaining.

“I am today’s India. I do hardcore textiles.

I am ahead of the times,” he says. “Handloom has become a fad. This is a country that celebrates mediocrity. [However], I go for the best.”

There is an arrogance about him. Perhaps it stems from his sense of vindication.

His work is finally finding the appreciation and respect he wanted.

It has changed his attitude.

“I don’t feel intimidated,” he says.

About The Author

Chinki Sinha