In your face ‘flauntwear’

Bengaluru-based designer Ajay Kumar makes his international debut at Swim Week Colombo 2017 with his resort wear collection themed on the lotus.

Just three seasons old at the Lakme India Fashion Week, Ajay is all set to showcase his resort-wear collection at Colombo Swim Week 2017 on July 1, to participate on the finale. Organised by the Colombo Fashion Week, it will be his first international show.

Bursts of turquoise blue, pink, aqua green, and red. A riot of lotuses spangled on shirts, jackets, shorts. Anyone who knows the idiosyncratic style sense of Bengaluru-based designer Ajay Kumar knows what this can mean. For those who don’t, you must check out the collection to know what a designer can do putting flowers on a menswear range.

All set to go, Ajay talks to MetroPlus about his collection ‘Paradox of Lotus Sutra’ pretty excitedly.

Flowy light weight cotton, khadi cotton, silk and linen dominate this collection of menswear and a small collection of womenswear as well. “Just as you see the layers of petals on a lotus, my clothes are all about layering,” says Ajay. It also gives him a great excuse to indulge in opulent prints. More so, go ballistic with his print on print signature style.

The theme suits him well again because he is known for creating layers in menswear. “It was a summer collection that I further built upon specifically for this show. When you talk of the lotus, we all know how it grows only in muddy miry waters, and rises above it. It is a symbol of birth and rebirth.” The muddy waters, he says, are represented in the dabs of black, a colour always crucial to his collections.

The range consists of shorts, light weight bomber jackets without an lining that can be casually thrown over a T-shirt, trousers, cowl shirts with asymmetrical hems, translucent over shirts, and long constructed shirts, again his statement style of the ‘Shurta’ — tucked in it can be a shirt, and left out, it is a kurta!

“The womenswear silhouettes are designed keeping in mind comfort and style with signature cowl blazers, palazzo pants, crop tops, skirts, long and short resort style dresses,” he adds. It flaunts a very androgynous style. In fact, he branched out into womenswear as well when a regular client asked him to create something as quirky for his wife as his own outfits because otherwise the lady was feeling rather ignored at parties! “Yes, my clothes are very in-your-face. It is occasional ‘flauntwear’,” he proudly proclaims.

“We are trying to create a sustainable approach to the entire collection. It takes time to go completely sustainable, but have made beginnings. We use 100% khadi, cotton, and linen. We don’t mix them with non-natural fibres. We are a print brand; but we do engineered prints, so there is less wastage; we design an entire outfit, measure and print it out. Any excess fabric we reuse as another element in another dress, reducing waste. We have started working with Jaipur weavers, Hyderabad handloom weavers. They have created twisted muslin, which looks like organza and is light weight. We also follow a fair wage policy. A part of this collection also features natural-dyed clothes. I hope to work more on this,” says Ajay.

Swim Week Colombo is a premier swimwear fashion event concentrating on Asia. This year the theme is centred around being ‘green conscious and earth sensitive’.

While he’s used traditional images and motifs of the lotus in his prints, he has also played around with geometric interpretations, like the lotus mandala.

Original link: In your face ‘flauntwear’

Author: Bhumika K