Payal Jain’s Paris Mon Amour, showcased at Lakme Fashion Week X FDCI, in Delhi, was utterly romantic and feminine, full of easy-breezy, playful, feminine silhouettes. The designer, who has worked with textiles and crafts extensively over the past three decades, used mostly white with a few paired with organic cotton denim. The collection was a play of chikankari from Lucknow, katrauan from Benaras, hand crochet, Chanderi, mul mul, applique, hand-stitched lace, cutwork detailing and raffia totes. Post-show, we sat down with Payal for a chat on working with whites, her journey and why design has to be sustainable.
Do you always watch your shows with the audience?
See, after a point, there’s nothing I can do. What am I gonna do? Hyperventilate inside. I watch every single one of my shows. I went in a little earlier than I should have this time (laughs).
How did you layer the whites in the collection?
I love white as a medium, and if you go back and see my collections, every one of them will have a little bit of white, but this one, I said I’m just going to go with white because the crafts that I was working with look the best in white. Sadly, on the ramp, you couldn’t see the detail. You have to look at it up close. So, the woven Chanderis had these little flowers woven into them, in the shirts, in the skirts. Again, the chikankari had flowers embroidered into the white-on-white. So, it’s a detailing which has taken time, but I also think white is the most satisfying medium and so universal. It’s timeless and classic. I’m a purist when it comes to fashion. So, I keep going back to the purity of white. And the denim was unwashed and unbleached. It was an organic cotton denim. Again, totally sustainable. And we just appliqued with the scrap, literally. So, there was no wastage in the entire collection. Everything was reused. From the chikans and the woven fabric, we made accessories, the scarves, the bows, everything that you saw, and that’s part of being sustainable, that you have no waste coming out of your collection.
The one thing about working with white is you do have a lot of waste because things will get damaged, or you get a stain. So, then you can’t use it in white. So, you go through many, many pieces, and then get one white, and then the rest go into other colours. But what I loved was that I could play with all of these weaves and crafts together, and white gave me that as a palette. You know, the minute it goes into colour, you wouldn’t even appreciate the amount of work that’s gone. It is most obvious in white. And I think it’s the most beautiful, if you ask.
There was so much romance in the whole collection…
I love to dress women who are feminine. Yes, they may be strong, but they don’t have to be unfeminine to be strong. And Mandira (Bedi, who closed the show) is a classic example. She’s gorgeous and beautiful. Yes, she’s strong. Yes, she does fitness. She does everything else, but she’s also very feminine. So, she’s like the perfect muse.
It’s been a long journey for you. How did you get into designing?
I’ve kind of grown up with a lot of art and design. My mother is an artist, so art was somehow part of my upbringing. So, I started doing drawing, sketching, at an age of about eight — live drawings, so you would have a still life, you know, like a pot lying, or a vase lying, and you would draw it. Then later, it started becoming humans, and bodies, and proportions, and anatomy. Sketching was my first love. And then, when I got to high school, I thought I would do architecture, because my father designed buildings. I worked with an architect, I remember, when I was in Class 11 or 12th, I worked in an architect’s office, like a summer internship. And long and short, I decided this wasn’t it. That’s when fashion kind of came up as a conversation. I’m talking about the late ‘80s. People didn’t even study fashion (then). It sounded interesting, and it really was only that at that point. I took my sketching a bit more seriously, put together portfolios and started writing to colleges. There was no Internet. You couldn’t just send an email. So, I made portfolios, wrote to colleges, letters, fashion schools across the world and went for interviews at a few of them in North America and finally settled down at FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising) in San Francisco.
And then, the rest is history. I think I came back in ‘93 and started my fashion studio in Hauz Khas Village, with about ₹20,000. And my rent was, I think, ₹1,500!
Back then, my studio was about couture. I would have a few dresses and a few samples, and all western, but there was a very minuscule market for western clothing. Everybody wore only Indian clothes.
Suddenly, here I was making western clothing, and there were no takers for it. And then gradually, you know, somebody would say, ‘Oh, I want to go for a cocktail or have a wedding or I’m graduating, I want a dress’. That’s how it started. So, it started with pure couture. So much learning and so much fun.
Textile was another thing I loved. So, I would work with the weavers. A certain percentage would be imported fabric. It was a process of exploration because there was no way of finding them. That’s how I found my chikan clusters and the Benaras clusters. I spent a lot of time in Bhuj, working with a lot of mirrorwork, woollen weaves, then Sanganer, Bagru. So, all of this was kind of a process of discovery.
What inspired you?
Art and artists inspired a lot of my work. Some collections were inspired by music, some by art, some by theatre. So, I had a lot of those dimensions to my childhood. I would think from a 3D point of view because of my background in architecture. Travel was a big part of what inspired my work. My aesthetics, which developed over a period of time was, it had to be timeless.
Of course, it needs some repurposing, reinventing, but it’s not sitting in a landfill. At least it has been preserved. All of that comes from the fact that you actually create your own fabrics. Collections which I’m creating, like with a very distinct theme or an inspiration, will take 20 months to see the light of day. Whether it’s prints, weaves or embroideries, there’s just so much India has to offer. Maybe I have worked with 14-15 states, and I still think there’s a lot to be done. Like the rest of my life, I can keep exploring.
What is the direction that the dialogue with textiles should be taking?
I think it’s really good in a way that it’s trending and people want to buy more of it. That time you had to kind of convince people that what is unique about it, and why they should preserve. But the flip side of it is that what people think is handloom or is being created by weavers, is not necessarily the case. You don’t know what you are buying. A lot of it is coming from China. A lot of it is imported, which is done on power looms. So, there’s a lot of greenwashing happening, and there’s a lot of efforts which are being made by the government, by designers, by everybody, to separate the two. And is it really helping a cluster? Is what they are buying going to some community and changing the way they live? They don’t know.
I definitely think sustainability is a key aspect. And I think every brand should be thinking about it because the landfills, a large part of the carbon footprint of the landfills is thanks to the fashion business. We are the largest polluters of the planet, really, the garment industry.
Design has to be meaningful and purposeful. The meaning is kind of vanishing, which I think has to be brought back. You’re doing it for a larger purpose. You’re doing it because it should outlive you. So, you should be using natural fabrics. You should try to use natural dyes… As a designer, I think it’s your responsibility…. There are so many things… It’s not just about creating.
How does it feel to see India having its moment and Indian textiles on the global map?
You know, honestly, we could never have imagined this is where we would be, after all these years. I remember the times when you’d take bags, set up appointments, internationally, I’m saying, and they would slam doors, saying, ‘Oh, you’re from India, we don’t trust you, go away’. That’s where we started.
And through the years, with the fashion week, the buyers kept coming, and now, you have buyers actually come and sit in my office, and they spend two days, and we create collections for them. And I’m talking about the biggest names internationally. You know, that’s how far we have come, as a country.
It’s also the respect, the regard. It just feels like a dream. Honestly, in our lifetime, we have seen this whole curve; it’s just amazing.
I can only say, it’s right place, right time. And, you know, if not now, then when? So, whatever we want to do, this is the place and the time to do it, and this is the country. And, you know, we’re just lucky to be here.
I always say that to design students also when I meet them, that your roots are what your strength is. That’s what makes you different from the rest of the world.