Violet, pink, gold, grey, with a dash of shimmer and pearls…coloured eyelashes are quite the fad. Wondering who made it popular? Well, if it’s outrageous and over-the-top fashion, it has got to be Lady Gaga. Nicki Minaj, on the other hand, made coloured hair wigs trendy. Rewind to the 80s and Madonna’s calf-length leggings and hoop earrings were what every girl in her teens wanted to look glamorous in. And Michael Jackson’s military jackets with sequins and metallic influences…oh, what a rage that still is!
Singers and musicians with a unique sense of style have always made an impact. Even the unlikely ones, such as Marilyn Manson, inspired people with his outlandish, Goth get-up. Believe it or not, Saint Laurent had him as the face of their campaign last year. That’s why, over the years, fashion brands have tied up with musicians for their creative inputs. This is their way of reaching out to a wider audience.
London-based high street brand River Island collaborated with Rihanna for a collection of street-to-chic outfits, Adam Levine, poster boy and front man of Maroon 5, designed casual wear for the American chain Kmart and Kanye West drew inspiration from military style for his line for APC, a French clothing label.
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This International trend is now picking up in India. “Brands are interested in talking to sub-cultures now. This is how they directly talk to their audience. With such collaborations, there is a cross pollination of ideas,” says Kunal Anand, creative director, Kultureshop.in, a website that’s collaborated with guitarist Randolph Correia of the band Pentagram and Shaa’ir + Func. Correia launched Frequency, a line of illustrated T-shirts for men and women, on the portal and it helped that he had a background in Fine Arts from the JJ School of Fine Arts, Mumbai.
“Singers and musicians travel a lot. They see a lot of things and have a global perspective. But they know the local context back at home, what works and reapply it accordingly,” says Anand. He is now working on a line that’s the result of collaboration between six musicians.
Correia’s band mate from Shaa’ir + Func, Monica Dogra, too has hopped onto the designing bandwagon with a collection for Stylista.com. Her sense of fashion is similar to her music, and contains elements of bohemian culture, grunge and rock and roll. “I have always been interested in style and I’m a proponent of local Indian talent.
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With Dogra constantly touring and working on albums, it took her a year to complete this collection. The design process involved her exploring fabrics, trying on samples and numerous changes had to be made till she was finally pleased with what she got. “The collection is vintage-inspired, and I also drew quite a bit of inspiration from people I’ve met along the way. In the future I would love to collaborate with Masaba Gupta or Anamika Khanna,” she says.
It took six months of trial and error for Nikhil Chinapa to come up with his Underground collection for Koovs.com. It comprises T-shirts, shades, vests, shirts and ripped jeans; basically, everything you’d need to look trendy at the next music festival you attend. “The team at Koovs and I got along well in the process of designing this collection. So this has been an easy first venture for someone like me who doesn’t know much about designing fabrics. Although, I am very fond of design and architecturally, it comes naturally to me,” he says. For these collections, music is the primary inspiration, along with elements drawn from their personal style. Chinapa seems excited about this venture and says, “It is like trying to describe the flavour of a plum cake. You can talk about the fruit and how moist the cake is but you’ve got to eat it to know what the cake is about. It’s the same thing with this music. If you watch a lot of videos of underground clubs, artistes and music, you get an essence of what we did with this line of clothing.”