Pix by Rupinder Sharma

He’s the Greta Garbo of the Indian fashion world. The man’s who is every celebrity’s favourite couturier but who assiduously shuns the limelight and the party circuit. “I see myself more as a product engineer rather than as a designer of pretty things,” says Rajesh Pratap Singh, with a mild touch of annoyance.

Pratap likes to play the game his own way and he isn’t about to alter his way of life to suit anyone else. As he sits in the chaos of his factory in Faridabad on the outskirts of Delhi, hair carelessly tousled, casually clad in a white shirt and close fitting black trousers, there’s no trace of the star fashion designer whose work has earned international acclaim.

He definitely doesn’t feel the need to dress the part, that’s for sure. “I enjoy wearing my factory rejects,” says the man who dresses beautiful people both in India and around the world, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Models scorch the ramp to show off Pratap’s AutumnWinter 2007-08 collection; (Above) A show-stealer from the designer’s Autumn Winter 2008-09 collection

Currently, Pratap is busy gearing up for the Paris Fashion Show later this month and putting together clothes for the womenswear segment. “We are at the stage of testing fabrics to see if they wear and tear,” he says, looking slightly tired after a particularly hard day.

Pratap famously likes to let his clothes do the talking. He has even gone to extreme lengths to ram home the point as he did with his Death Collection at the India Fashion Week, 2005, in Delhi. All his models sashayed along the ramp with their faces covered. The aim: to make the clothes the centre of attraction, everything else had to take a backseat.

But fashionistas flock to his shows and can’t get enough. He has made waves internationally, showing in different corners of the globe like Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore and even Dubai and Jakarta. Everywhere his work has grabbed eyeballs for its obsessive attention to detail and understated design aesthetic.

A hands-on designer, Pratap likes to get involved in all the stages of a garment’s production. And even though he’s famously media-shy, he doesn’t mind talking about his work and the myth of his reclusive image. He’s dismissive about personality cults and says: “I don’t see why fashion designers have to be hyped into celebrities. As long as I need to talk about my clothes, it’s fine, but is it important for people to know the name of my dog?”

He adds: “I find the hype surrounding our trade very silly. Our work is no different from any other profession and we are at best applied artists, so why the need to publicise our creativity?”

Pratap’s creativity has taken on various forms like when he created a meditating man with a Buddha-like look by quirkily welding together several pairs of scissors. It became an installation piece at his Paris Fashion show in February this year.

And later, he created an out-of-the-box motorbike rider using the same multiple-scissor approach — this was showcased at the 2008 Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Nevertheless, Pratap categorically rejects suggestions that he’s an artist, saying, “I just fool around making frivolous things. But people choose to talk about them.”

Cool white numbers from Pratap’s Spring Summer 2006 collection; (Below) The designer’s Spring Summer 2007 line

In recent months, Pratap has been working with Sanjay Leela Bhansali on the period opera Padmavati based on the life of Rani Padmini, the Rajput princess famed for her beauty, which ran to packed houses in Paris and Italy. As always he’s modest about his role: “I just created the stylised 1920s’ Rajasthani costumes which Bhansali wanted. The opera was his vision, I was merely acting as the tailor.”

However, he reckons it was an education working with Bhansali and dancer Tanusree Shankar (he’s a great fan) choreographing a slice of history.

Pratap has always been a person who knew his mind and that’s a fact to which mentor and fashion designer David Abraham readily testifies. As a newcomer, Pratap interned with Abraham for a year and earned his instant approval. Says Abraham: “Even as a beginner he was self- assured with a clear sense of direction.”

Cut to the present. The designer’s creating ‘structural’ garments that are usually a mix of soft and hard lines. He is adept at playing with contrasts and loves black and white — they are by far his favourite colours. He also loves using natural fabrics like muslin and khadi (for which he has developed a very fine count).

Then, there are woven saris which he always finds fascinating. “It’s more interesting and elegant than those six yards of fabric which are heavily stone-studded,” he laughs, wondering aloud about whether he’s ruffling a few feathers.

Away from the world of glamour and the big cities, Pratap is working with a co-operative society formed with the shepherds of Ladakh to develop a fine cashmere. “I am more comfortable in small villages,” he says, pointing out that he has never been much of a big city person.

Along the way, he has picked one award after another. Most recently, he was chosen as the first Indian designer to showcase ‘Absolut Attitude’ in 2007. Absolut Vodka has been running a fashion project since the late ’80s, and has collaborated with the biggest names in fashion like Gucci, Versace and Manolo Blahnik, to create cutting-edge garments. Pratap created a garment out of a special variety of paper (which does not tear) and used 10,000 LEDs behind the lightweight fabric. “I made a tree of life motif with Absolut bottles and the garment itself was bottle-shaped in parts,” says Pratap.

Abroad, the ‘Rajesh Pratap Singh’ brand retails with stores like Harvey Nichols, L’eclaireur, Seibu, Club 21, Alan Bilzerian, Malgosia, H Lorenzo and Isetan. Nevertheless, he says that Indian designers still have to fight preconceived ideas about their work when they sell abroad.

motorbike that Pratap created by welding together several pairs of scissors was showcased at the 2008 Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week

“Just because I am from Rajasthan, people tend to compartmentalise me even before they see my collections. They keep saying, ‘Oh you are from India? So where is the fuschia?’ But I’m sure perceptions will change with time.” For Pratap, Rajasthan is more about deserts (where the men wear white) and less about tourists and hot pink shades.

For Pratap the realist, fashion is not about glamour. “It’s a lot about sweat and toil where fashion designers have to often struggle to pay their workers. We have to work our butts off in our factories and it’s not as if many of us are making lots of money despite the R&D that goes into our trade,” he says.

He also insists that high fashion garments are not overpriced. “A limited edition piece will always be expensive. A Balenciaga garment doesn’t come cheap because it is all about image. Besides, a certain amount of blood goes into the production of such pieces.” His own pieces have a start-up price of Rs 3,500 (for a shirt) and go up to Rs 40,000 (for a suit or jacket).

This graduate of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) who’s from a family of doctors, considers himself the “black sheep of the family” since he charted his own destiny in a profession that was still unconventional in the ’80s. Even though he spent most of his childhood in Jaipur, Pratap considers Sriganganar, near Bikaner, where he was born, his hometown.

The designer with wife Payal (third from left) and clients in his office. Pix by Rupinder Sharma

He moved to Delhi to pursue his dream of studying commerce at the Shri Ram College of Commerce — because everyone in his school felt it was the place to be. But almost immediately he realised that commerce was not his cup of tea. Soon afterwards he interned with fashion designers David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore “picking up pins if you please”. Abraham taught him about design and form and Thakore pointed out the finer details about textiles and fabrics.

The next obvious destination was Delhi’s NIFT. Here his roommate was Manish Arora, while Payal (who he married subsequently) and Namrata Joshipura were batchmates. He knew immediately that fashion was where his heart lay. Close buddy Joshipura praises him effusively, saying that his clothes, “with their exquisite finesse are an index of his personality”.

Out of NIFT, by 1997 he had launched his own label and was exporting garments. But before long he was spotted and his work started selling domestically in stores like Amaya, a boutique in Delhi’s upscale Santusti complex. Soon afterwards Tarun Tahiliani began stocking his lines at his designer store, Ensemble, and Kavita Bhartia insisted that he showcase at Ogaan, while he also found a place for himself in multi-designer store, carma. “Everything fell into place so easily,” says Pratap, adding that he was very lucky.

But wife Payal (they have two children, a son who’s seven and a four-year-old daughter) has a clear opinion about her husband. “He is a workaholic who doesn’t like to compromise on the quality of his garments. And at heart, he is very sensitive which works both for and against him,” she says.

Payal looks after the merchandising of his clothing and in Pratap’s words “she is the boss”. But for him, the day begins and ends with work, and everything else is shunted into the background.