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These days, if you want to see a beautiful fashion show, please go to a museum. Museums around the world have done a fantastic job of showing themselves off by giving fashion a gravitas that the outside world often takes for granted. In doing so, sacred buildings have made themselves attractive to followers of popular culture. Antiques and serious art stores allowed fundraisers, with big-ticket celebrities flocking the dark halls in coats and buggers. Like the Met Ball, an annual fundraiser hosted by American Vogue every summer to raise money for the New York Museum’s Costume Department. It is now known as the Oscars of the East Coast, as it is attended by many glittering movie stars. Eyeball queen Kim Kardashian appears every year to the world’s delight – sometimes in Marilyn Monroe’s original ‘Happy Birthday Mr. President’ dress, or other times in head-to-toe Ballerina hats, even when she’s not seen at the world’s most visible party.
Last weekend, the best of fashionistas turned up at the prestigious Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), Delhi’s iconic private museum of contemporary South Asian art, to celebrate 15 years of another ‘unseen’ fashion hero. Rimzim Dadu, diminutive designer, rests. Although she has “social anxiety”, she finds it funny that she is in fashion, but she is, thank God. I feel it is unfair to call her a costume designer. Her clothes are works of art, twisting, turning and adjusting threads like the texture of a floor. This kind of fabric manipulation has become her leitmotif, and it is very difficult to do it; Imitation is hard. Her reworked fabric bridges premium and couture, although I find myself wanting to wear every piece I see on every outing. I mean, if you can’t turn heads, why bother popping in?
For Dadu, fashion is less about clothes and more about art. At KNMA, a wall of rejected swatches shows how hard it was to get the finished product, while guests are directed to a room where the finished product is displayed on the surface. At one end, three craftsmen sat at their machines and showed how the work was done, and the curious guests were happy to ask questions.
That, her ‘museum worthy’ pieces are totally fashion-wise. A silver shift dress with square collage made for the perfect disco night outfit. The black-and-white lehenga collection featured graphic rope work; One can wear it to a wedding or cocktail party with equal ease. Some jackets are matched with beautiful bikini sets. The menswear was equally elegant. And yes, along with Tara Sutaria and Au Courant actor Vijay Varma, she had plenty of Bollywood glitz along with artists like Mansha Gera, Vibha Galhotra and GR Irana. Dadu showcased a leather patola, her experiments with origami, silicon, metal, chiffon and zari with hair-thin threads.
Museums and art galleries have turned into the stomping grounds of the world of style. The National Museum is exhibiting an extensive collection of Indian weaving and embroidery, each piece in collaboration with a designer. Last year, the glamorous Chatterjee & Lal Gallery in Mumbai put together a retrospective of fiber artist Nelly Sethna (weaver, textile designer and craft champion) curated by the amazing Nancy Adajania and the brilliant philanthropist Dr. Feroza Godrej.
Dadu believes that fashion and art are two sides of the same coin, and they are happy to sit where they meet. They discover that the two worlds are bound together by one thread—the pursuit of beauty and the honor of memory. Their combination is a win-win for both.
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