(From top) Glimpses from Wendell Rodricks’ spring-summer 2005 line and the designer. Pictures by Rashbehari Das and Pradip Sanyal

Your recent collection for spring-summer 2005 uses a lot of muted shades and you have attributed this to the general sombre mood due to the tsunami disaster. Does a natural calamity actually affect fashion?

When something really sad happens in the world around you, it really affects creative people. At such times you don?t want to create something very bright and flashy. As for me, when I was designing this collection I was just not in the mood to work with vibrant colours. So, I restricted the base colour to a very murky, muddy brown and combined some glimpses of bright red, aqua and pale blue with it. Apart from the palette, which reflects my mood at that time, the collection has got nothing to do with the tsunami.

What is your India Fashion Week collection all about?

I haven?t started working on that yet, but the theme is ready. I have a strong emotion for the theme and so wouldn?t like to reveal it right now. However, it will be a resort wear line. I?ll showcase 25 garments that will be very wearable. The styling and silhouettes are absolutely new.

Resort wear is quite a new genre of clothing. How would you describe the look?

These are a kind of clothes you can wear at any resort destination in the world ? right from Goa to the Bahamas. The resort look is very casual ? loose pajamas with sandals, sarongs with sleeveless tops and so on. I have actually taken beach wear a step further and developed it into resort wear.

You have been venturing into home accessories for some time now. What?s the latest on that front?

In April, I will be opening my home accessories store in Goa. It will stock all kinds of linen ? bedsheets, table covers and curtains ? and tableware made from glass and ceramic. Next, I?ll concentrate on designing furniture.

You were planning to set up a costume museum in Goa.

Thanks to the India International Film Festival that was held in Goa in December, all my plans for the costume museum have been upset. The land that had been allotted for my museum has been given away for the festival. The museum has been in the pipeline for a very long time now and something or the other is always coming up to stop its progress. It?s become a sore point for me and I don?t even like talking about it anymore.

Why did you close down your restaurant, Aubergine?

The restaurant was opened jointly with someone and we have closed it down quite a few years back due to some problems. Though I have a degree in hotel management, I wouldn?t like to open another restaurant in future. I find designing a lot easier. In a restaurant you have to be a slave all the time.

Do you have any plans of venturing into costume designing for films?

I can?t do the movies that are made in India. The opportunity to design for a film like Black comes once in a lifetime and Sabyasachi (Mukherjee) did a great job at that. But even then, the story was so strong that people wouldn?t pay much attention to the clothes. I will only design for films where the clothes play a very vital role, but that usually doesn?t happen.

Do you have any plans of expanding your store anywhere outside Goa?

Not really, I am very happy with my Goa store. But I have just opened a shop-in-shop at Rain Tree in Bangalore. Even my home store will be only in Goa, but I am open to orders from everywhere.

Your Visionnaire collection for the visually challenged, using Braille, was a landmark in fashion. Do you plan to do anything similar in future?

I don?t have any concrete plans right now, but I would like to do something for children with autism. I have to see how I can help them in terms of clothing.

Last year, I did a collection for children with different disabilities and also had a fashion show with them at the Goa Marriot.