A gleaming set decked with jasmine. And, beautiful ‘brides’ walking to Thare rahiyo from the classic Pakeezah. Picturesque. Suneet Varma celebrated his love for the 1972 gem starring Meena Kumari at the Hyundai India Couture Week, in association with Reliance Brands, an FDCI initiative, held in Delhi, recently. The affable and humble Varma later decoded the collection for t2.
The show was dazzling...
When I was building the set and imagining the collection, it’s really important that we keep the Indianness alive in couture shows. We do Indian clothes and they are best imagined in this scenario. It needs to be this kind of a setup to imagine how the clothes would be.... I think a lot of times the clothes don’t make the connect with the reason we have Indian couture, which is essentially to dress the bride.
The set looked beautiful...
The set was inspired by Pakeezah. So lots of chandeliers and mogra. The collection was called Mogra. I think I am not able to detach myself from Pakeezah and I haven’t been able to do it for the last 25 years! (Laughs) I think I was born to do this. I remember being six or seven years old or maybe even younger and jumping into the auto with my naani to go and watch it at Sapna Cinema. I remember being absolutely dazzled. Those stars have never left my eyes. If there are 25 million viewers on YouTube for those songs, mine must have been about 18 million of them! (Laughs out loud) I know every single thing. I was like, one day, I’ll do it and this time I felt ready and hopefully, I did justice to it.
The collection was glamorous and so hot!
I had never done things like the gota. If you see the Pakeezah costumes, there are a lot of gota dupattas and shararas. So, it started from there for me. As I was developing, the silhouettes became more languid. If you look at how India does the sharara, the kurti is much shorter and the sharara is much more fitted. If you see the long kurtas, we make them quite narrow. I kept telling my office that everything has to be loose-fitted and drape-y as opposed to form-fitting because if you look at those clothes, they were never form-fitting, except for the blouses. They have been fabric-driven and softer. We also went to Benaras and got some fabrics woven. I love the idea of embroidery on tissue fabric and I wanted to make the lehngas in tissue, but realised that the normal tissue is not strong enough to take the zardozi kadhai. I had to make them on the net and applique them on the tissue. So, the process was longer, but I still somehow managed to do it.
I am a big fan of seduction. Therefore the second song... Ye hai reshmi zulfon ka andhera. I worked on it for four-five months but when we did the final rehearsal, trust me, even I was shocked at how it looked. I think this would be one of my best shows in the last 10 years, at least.
I want to be able to seduce all your senses at the same time--- smell, music, what you are hearing... this is the beauty of Indian couture.
We did three different versions of hair and make-up. Raniwala jewellers came through with us very beautifully. I told them I wanted passas. They went into their archives.
The veils were so different...
I have always loved the idea of a purdah-ke-peeche kind of a thing. It’s more intriguing and enticing. I wanted to do the triangular kind of veils with beautiful embroidery.
There were the quintessential reds too, but the palette comprised pastels...
It’s actually the mid-pastel for us. More khila hua.
Finally, what has been the key to sustaining a long career?
Someone asked me: ‘How are you so good at this after so many years?’ I told him and this is the truth, this is the only thing I am good at. I would be terrible at everything else! (Laughs) I wouldn’t know how to be a corporate guy or a finance person. It’s also many people’s efforts. I am not going to take all the credit. Eventually, I have to drive it.