Sabina Chopra in Sabyasachi. Picture by Pabitra Das

Sabina Chopra has many claims to fame. She is a buyer, the face of Aza. She is the wife of Anil Chopra, big boss at Lakme Fashion Week. And to a passerby at LFW, she looks like Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s muse. But t2 talks to Sabina the Fashionista first....

You’ve been wearing a lot of Calcutta designers all through the week…

Oh yes! My wardrobe is full of Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Anamika Khanna and Kiran Uttam Ghosh. The Calcutta sensibility is a nice mix of contemporary that’s within a comfort zone. I like their colours, their subtle embellishments. I don’t wear crystal, so that leaves out the Delhi designers! I feel many intelligent women wear Calcutta labels. Basically, if she is wearing a Calcutta designer, you know the woman has a brain!

How did your eclectic style statement come into being?

I don’t know myself! I feel it comes from not thinking too much about what you want to wear. I don’t think in sets like this skirt, this shirt. I buy separates that give me a wider dimension to mix and match. I shop randomly and since I don’t have too much time on hand, I quickly put together something well last minute. I can leave NCPA and go home, change and be back in one hour, out of which travel time is 45 minutes!

What does your cupboard look like?

It’s very neat. The clothes are segregated as day wear and night wear. It has lots of black, white and blue jeans. There are bits of colour. I am a non-pink person (but she does carry a bubblegum pink Gucci bag!), though I do red for drama. My clothes are arranged as T-shirts, short tops, long tops and skirts.

How do you handle so many designers who woo you with clothes?

No one can make me wear what I don’t want to wear! I have my polite ways of getting out of it: I just say, ‘it’s not me’ or ‘it’s too sexy for me’ or ‘you need to find a hip girl for this’ or simply say that I don’t have the energy to change six times a day!

How can Lakme Fashion Week be improved?

I think we need to start looking at designers who have been around for a while but on the ramp, they are just not great. I saw many collections this week that honestly should not have been there because it brings down the event. Designers need to be educated about who is their market. Domestic markets are 100 times bigger than that one elusive, mysterious foreign buyer.

What makes a good buyer?

A buyer should have the aesthetic and also the technical expertise. They need to have hanger sense and know that a garment that looks very beautiful might not fit that well. You can’t open a store and just come into Fashion Week as a buyer. It is much more work and knowledge than that.

Shradha Agarwal