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Sanjay Garg doesn’t look like your typical designer. That’s because he isn’t one. Quiet, not flashy. Sweet, shy and close-cropped hair, he has a sincere student vibe, the kind whose nose you find buried in a book on the front row in class. That’s perhaps the only kind of front row he’s interested in. Because the Delhi designer and his five-year-old label Raw Mango aren’t in it for the ‘fashion’. They have a bigger dream. It involves taking India’s textile and putting it right up there. In a short span, the textile label has taken over women — young and not-so-young. A quirky Raw Mango silk sari or Chanderi dupatta is on everyone’s lust list. A chat with the designer...
Raw mango conjures up a taste... I wanted the label to have the ‘taste’ of something. Raw mango brings up a memory. You think of khatta. You think of a village, you think of trees. Nothing can be as rural as a raw mango.
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“I know Sanjay (Garg) for three years and I first went to him as a buyer. I wear so many whites but he inspires me to wear colour! This season I am planning to wear a lot of colour, especially on saris. Jhaal Farezi has the ambience and the look to host a label like Raw Mango. It’s just so befitting. They both speak about tradition in a modern way. So it’s a perfect brand marriage!” smiled Madhu Neotia in between her shopping marathon! Picture by Rashbehari Das |
India is not only kitsch…
Why is it that people prefer minimalism in western clothes and when it came to Indian clothes, they wanted to do 10,000 things and look like a decorated tree? The youngsters these days don’t always want the motif. So I did away with it. I have a great problem when people expect only kitsch from India. We have textiles like no other country. We use textiles not as luxury but as a necessity. Even our middle-class wears handloom.
The Raw Mango colours…
Have been worked upon big time. All our colour references are very western but their skin tone is so different. Why should we follow their colour trends? We are brown — not black, not white — a neutral canvas, and we can do any colour. People used to say lime green is not sophisticated. Three years ago, we proved them wrong. I love rani pink. Diana Vreeland (iconic fashion writer) rightly said it’s the navy blue of India! It works on all Indian skin tones. But we don’t only do bright. We do a lot of charcoal these days. We don’t use only one kind of zari. We do four different kinds, so people can choose what they like and what jewellery they want to wear. We mix thread with our zari to make it muted and softer on the skin.
The sparrow motif is special to me…
Everyone talks about peacocks and parrots. I love sparrows. They have gone missing because of our mobile phone towers. I also really like the mogra motif. It’s small and so pretty. It looks very nice when worn in the right proportion because everyone can’t carry off a bigger pattern. Mushru is another signature of Raw Mango. People in the village call it elaicha because it resembles elaichi seeds.
The visual is just 10 per cent of the design…
What you see with your eyes is not all that there is to design. Design is a solution. It’s a bigger world. The music, the smell in your showroom is also part of design.
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From Mrs G to bankers, everyone wears Raw Mango…
But when Kareena Kapoor wore it, I got worried that people might stop wearing it! I like to go beyond Bollywood…. It’s not about positioning at fashion weeks and Bollywood. I don’t bother about Sonam Kapoor or magazines. They might say I am conservative. I say they are conservative. They know only one medium of communication. There are so many other kinds of marketing. And curiosity is one of them. In my store, there is no display. Everything is inside cupboards. When someone is coming to me, they already know what I make and what they want to see.
No girl wants to look fluffy in a sari…
In the earlier days, people used to buy stiff woven saris and wear it knowing that in five or six wears, the sari will become soft. Today an average youngster wears the sari probably only five times total! That’s why they are likely to stay away from handloom saris. There is a great gap in terms of design. I want our generation to wear handloom saris. They should not only buy one to keep but wear them. I worked very hard to make the sari wearable and softer. The borders became thinner because no one wants the sari to bulk up near the waist. We have also tried to innovate with the petticoat and fall. Fall is an English term. Our traditional saris didn’t need a fall, only chiffons do. So we are incorporating the fall as a design element.
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When Kareena Kapoor wore it, I got worried that people might stop wearing it! |
If you don’t see yourself in a sari, you will never wear it…
If you see a sari and can only imagine your mother or grandmother in it, you will probably not end up wearing it. Everything you wear is a message. It’s all about communication. Even when you are silent, you are communicating. What is your sari communicating? Is it making you feel too old or traditional? We find it often does, so we felt the need to make the sari simpler. That is my design philosophy. More than reviving, surviving. I would say we work on demand.
Less is more with a Raw Mango sari but…
A pair of earrings would be good, better than a necklace. I suggest flat chappals because they are so comfortable. A printed petticoat can also look pretty, sometimes matching looks nice, sometimes not. Also, the blouse style is very important. And I don’t like the home furnishing tassels. I don’t know why they are made! They are so done. Also, I don’t understand skin show. You don’t have to show skin to show how broad-minded you are.
My favourite designers are…
Jil Sander for her extreme minimalism and Yohji Yamamoto for his practicality and comfort-driven designs. He doesn’t believe in high heels. I also really like Indian label Pero these days.
I don’t think we are a super brand yet…
At the moment we are not a super brand and I don’t know if I will ever be one. There’s no benchmark. But yes, I definitely want to see Indian textiles on the global map. Bali has two kinds of ikat and they talk about it so much. We have 50 kinds of ikat. And then, ikat is just one of our many, many weaves.
There’s beauty in imperfection…
I don’t work with master craftsmen. Why? Because they feel that everything is done and they are not open. I am the eldest person in my company! When I approach a collection, I don’t try to do too many things. It’s never cluttered. Even my grandest sari is not cluttered. It can be quirky, but I don’t like being bizarre. The difference between a traditional sari and our sari is the same difference between classical and folk music.