Name: Paromita Banerjee.

Age: 25.

Design school: NID (Ahmedabad) 2006.

First call you made after making it to LFW’s GenNext: A “special” friend.

Take on trends: “Fashion is not about trends. It is an individual’s choice that makes the best and most stylish statement. If fashion was all about trends, we would all look like clones of each other!”

Design strong point: Colour sense. “The way I mix my colours.”

Design weakness: “My silhouettes have scope for improvement.”

Best stage of creating a collection: The initial chaos of the collection.

Internships: Bandhej, Ashish N. Soni and Anamika Khanna. “While doing my final project at Ashish’s I realised designing is what I want to do.”

Greatest lesson learnt: “Impossible is nothing.”

A designer you would like to dress: “All my ex-bosses, if they are willing!”

A designer whose career graph you love: “I want to create my own career graph.”

Bollywood or international fashion weeks? ? “Not aiming for anything. Whatever comes my way first.”

If not a designer then what: Something else that is arty. Or else a professor.

LFW collection

Myriad visual images were kept in mind while designing this collection. The garments are inspired by the original trend-setters, like Rajasthani women or even bartanwalis who don’t know how fabulous their fashion is!

Name: Tuhina & Parul Shukla.

Age: Tuhina is 25 and Parul is 27.

Design school: Tuhina: NIFT Calcutta 2004.

Parul: NIFT Mohali 2005.

First call you made after making it to LFW’s GenNext: Parents.

Take on trends: “Trends come and go, style remains.”

Design strong point: Drapes and an understanding of Western fashion, quite “avant garde”.

Design weakness: “Sometimes we don’t know when to curb our creativity,” laughs the sister duo.

Best stage of creating a collection: Conceptualising and experimenting.

Internships: Tuhina has interned with Kiran Uttam Ghosh and an export house. Parul has interned in Orient Express, an export house in Delhi.

Greatest lesson learnt: “You need to be fast in fashion. Also, the theoretical and practical aspects of fashion are vastly different.”

A designer you would like to dress: Kiran Uttam Ghosh because “she’s always in white shirts and trousers!”

A designer whose career graph you love: Sabyasachi Mukherjee.

Bollywood or international fashion weeks? ? Both. “They are different genres but equally interesting.”

If not a designer then what:

Tuhina: Artist.

Parul: Stylist.

LFW collection

The theme revolves around the development of the human psyche. It is a melange of fabric and texture. The collection is about structured fluidity and there are lots of pleats and folds giving it that edge.

 

Name: Shweta Chhawchharia.

Age: 25.

Design school: NIFT Calcutta 2005.

First call you made after making it to LFW’s GenNext: Father.

Take on trends: “Don’t follow trends. Follow style, that comes from within.”

Design strong point: Fabrics. Layering, mix and match and texture.

Design weakness: Embroidery.

Best stage of creating a collection: Working on the mood board.

Internships: One year at Shantanu Goenka.

Greatest lesson learnt: “What you learn at NIFT is very different from the real world.”

A designer you would like to dress: Raghavendra Rathore.

A designer whose career graph you love: Vikram Phadnis.

Bollywood or international fashion weeks? ? International fashion weeks.

If not a designer then what: “Assisting in dad’s business.”

LFW collection

It is inspired by an attic of memories and is influenced by my grandma’s wardrobe. Embroidery gains importance and the emphasis lies in styling the garments.

 

Name: Gopal Roy.

Age: 26.

Design school: Final year student in NIFT Calcutta.

First call you made after making it to LFW’s GenNext: Parents.

Take on trends: “In India, trends work once you modify it to suit your sensibility.”

Design strong point: Pattern-cutting and structured silhouettes.

Design weakness: Embroidery. “I don’t know how to balance embroidery.”

Best stage of creating a collection: “When the inspiration translates into the garment.”

Internships: Abhishek Byas and Vivek Kumar.

Greatest lesson learnt: “Creativity is great but marketability is equally important.”

A designer you would like to dress: John Galliano.

A designer whose career graph you love: Sabyasachi Mukherjee.

Bollywood or international fashion weeks? ?

International fashion weeks.

If not a designer then what:

Nothing. “I would only be a designer.”

LFW collection

The line is inspired by modern architecture. It is all about structure and angles, very futuristic. Pintucks, pleats and strong patterns dominate the collection and the colours are grey, brown and black.

 

Name: Vineet Agarwal.

Age: 22.

Design school: A summer programme from NIFT, Calcutta in 2008.

First call you made after making it to LFW’s GenNext: Mother.

Take on trends: “Depends on the person, their body type and lifestyle. Trends are not trendy if followed blindly.”

Design strong point: Understanding ethnic Indian design sensibilities.

Design weakness: Pattern-making.

Best stage of creating a collection: Deciding the colour story.

Internships: Working in his mother’s boutique Saarthi for four years.

Greatest lesson learnt: “Make the most of your resources and situation.”

A designer you would like to dress: Anamika Khanna.

A designer whose career graph you love: Sabyasachi Mukherjee.

Bollywood or international fashion weeks? ? “Once I reach an international fashion week, Bollywood will be mine!”

If not a designer then what: Businessman.

LFW collection

Traditional Indian jewellery has inspired the collection. Bright jewel colours like ruby, emerald, topaz and amethyst appear in the line. It is a modern-ethnic line.

Apart from these five next generation labels, here are two emerging designers who will make the city proud at LFW

 

Neha Agarwal

This 27-year-old designer graduated from NIFT, Calcutta, in 2003. And if you’re wondering why you still haven’t heard about her in the last six years, it’s only because she wanted to graph her career the other way.

“I went the outstation exhibition route because it is easier to set up the commerce that way. Now I feel I am ready to hit the stores,” says Neha. But coming up before that is a more daunting task — a fashion week collection for autumn-winter 2009-10 where she will be showcasing at the Emerging Designer category.

After winning the Most Creative Designer award in her batch, her talent was immediately spotted by one of her graduation show judges Sabyasachi Mukherjee. A one-year internship with him followed. “Our aesthetics connected and I felt that my sensibilities were in sync with his. He is a genius,” she says about her ex-boss.

The mix and match effect can be seen in her work too. But her label design epitomises her creativity. It’s two strips of scrap cloth that come together to form a 2” by 3” rectangle, with her label name ‘Neha Agarwal’ embroidered in black thread on a white square fabric and placed in the centre. It’s a happy melange of fabric and colour — very fashionable and edgy.

“That’s how I would also describe my clothes,” she smiles. She believes in the power of separates that work well on their own as well as make a strong statement when they come together as an ensemble. Neha’s mood board is often inspired by people and their quirks! “I am confident about my designs, what I don’t like is selling. I’d rather stand in one corner of my stall and observe how people react,” she says.

Neha is a fashion designer by chance. If she had not tagged along with her friends to the NIFT entrance exam, she would have been “an MBA or something”. She recalls that Sunday when she wrote the seven-hour NIFT paper. “It was my best Sunday ever!” she smiles.

This one is worth watching out for.

Rimi Nayak

Lakme Fashion Week is not new to her. It was at this platform that she made her mark as a GenNext designer last season. A bout of illness came in between her “follow-up work” but Rimi is now more than making up for the lost time. “I got good response for my debut collection and many inquiries too but because I was not well, I couldn’t cash it in,” says the leather design student from the batch of 2007, NIFT Calcutta.

She then joined Sabyasachi for less than a month and attributes “all her exposure and learning” to him. This season at LFW she has graduated from GenNext to the Emerging Designer category where she will show an “avant garde line inspired by architecture”.

Rimi’s collections always have a conscience. “I want to do meaningful work. I want to collaborate with crafts in a different way,” she adds. And unlike this year’s GenNext designers, she is not closed to being bitten by the Bollywood bug. “I love Manish Malhotra’s and Rocky S’s work. Their styles have really travelled from screen to street. I want to be famous,” she signs off.