Rahul Mishra’s Collection Enchants at Paris Haute Couture Week
NEW DELHI (IANS) – Rahul Mishra’s ‘The Enchanted’, akin to Rumi’s thoughts, is a wilderness beyond the boundaries that define dreams from reality. The designer showcased his latest collection with a digital presentation at the recent Paris Haute Couture Week. While this season of Paris Haute Couture Week returned to the runway, the event had both virtual and physical presentations.
The collection features ensembles which bloom from the desire of a Himalayan spring – of a blue sky laden with cotton candy clouds riding on the wind, blanketing fields painted in every color of the prismatic spectrum, swaying under the gentle warm sun – ‘The Enchanted’ is a work of fantasy.
The ensembles were replete with floral motifs like poppies, lilies, foxgloves, bellflowers, hollyhocks, iris and anemones. And the medinilla magnifica, and the queen crape myrtle bloomed aside Aztec and hibiscus and buttercup and Daphne – on capes, dresses, jumpsuits and gowns. The collection was a celebration of life in bloom, unadulterated by city lights.
Travel restrictions constrained the designer from presenting a physical show resulting in the team recreating the fantasy in the designer’s atelier. A flirtation between layers of reality, imagination and surrealist expression, the pieces of embroidery installations soaked in the spirit of nature and reimagined it. Some pieces aimed to imitate nature and its elements through various applications of handcraft, forming an arrangement of Himalayan spring in bloom.
Wilderness crept up the bodies of models, enveloping them in oneness with the essence of life. These pieces, combined with sheer tulle and luscious silk taffeta enabled the looks to render a surrealist vision. Shoulders in gossamer silk organza, cotton candy clouds, birds were embroidered on the surface of the garment like a painter’s afterthought.
This collection is a love poem to nature and a humble tribute to the elaborate biodiversity of Himalayas. Through it, the designer speaks of a new realm that is beyond the complexities of material living, its rights and wrongs.
