In his opening show for the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week (WIFW), Wendell Rodricks continued his leaning towards art movements that swept the world and influenced several aspects of design, like fashion and decor.
Earlier, his Fall/Winter 2009 collection centred on the Mondrian squares, becoming also a tribute to the late YSL who used Piet Mondrian’s iconic squares in his clothes extensively.
Now, Rodricks’ Spring/Summer 2010 collection, ‘The Cubist’, which showcased at the WIFW, has been inspired by the Cubist Movement of the 20th century, which began with the likes of Pablo Picasso and was later developed by Juan Gris and others.
Three sequences
The line consisted of three sequences – Rodricks’ trademark whites, a print-centric line made to resemble a ‘Cubist aquarium’, and a line of evening dresses in solid “red-carpet” hues and silhouettes.
Throughout the show, the Cubist movement found representation in various pieces like a structured silk organza overshirt, a cotton rectangle skirt or a tent dress with angular shoulder pads. In the second sequence, Rodricks, for once, used a print – here a seahorse print inspired by the Cubist Movement. “Even the bubbles that the seahorses sprout are cube-shaped, which obviously doesn’t happen in reality,” the designer pointed out at the end of the show. The silver jewellery, designer by Bangalore-based Nisha Mathew Ghosh, was also shaped in the form of seahorses. The sequence also saw some colour, chiefly fuchsia, orange, red and aquamarine. Pieces ranged from jersey dresses to a tunic sari and dhoti gown.
The third and last sequence featured a range of ultra-glamorous gowns in orange, red, fuchsia and white, which ranged from lungi wrap gowns to ribboned summer gowns, white lycra Cubist-inspired gowns and the backless red sari gown.
“We have pushed different boundaries with the line. How practical and how unwearable can a piece be made? Do we stay plain white or go all bright? In the end, we’ve managed a pretty cohesive collection,” elaborated Rodricks.
On the last sequence of evening gowns, he said, “A lot of red-carpets are happening these days, so the line has been designed keeping that in mind. And the clothes are extremely comfortable and designed to stay in place no matter what.”
Pointing to the red sari gown that model Jesse Randhawa wore, he said, “Look at this. It’s sexy and it’s comfortable. Jesse can dance in it, which she is in fact going to, without it slipping anywhere. Like this one, a lot of dresses have been built on a swimsuit.”
The Goan is also opening a store in Delhi next month. “The store would be a shop-in-shop in collaboration with the people behind Zoya in Mumbai,” he revealed.
Wendell Rodricks will also take forward his attachment to Goa, where he is currently based and to which he owes his laidback design aesthetic. “I’m in the process of writing a book documenting Goa’s clothing tradition, which will be out next year,” he added.
