Designer Sreejith Jeevan on winning an award for his fashion film at LFW

A model wearing an outfit from his Winter/Festive 2014 line ‘Strung Together’(Left); Sreejith Jeevan of Rouka (Right)

Set to the strains of a Carnatic recital and vocal notes from a Bharatanatyam dance class, deft hands weave garlands out of fragrant flowers, ghungroo-clad feet join the symphony, and fabrics billow and undulate, as designer Sreejith Jeevan’s muse — a consummate city girl — discovers the joy of exploring a temple town. These are some of the vignettes from Jeevan’s fashion film Strung Together, which attempted to encapsulate the spirit behind the Lakme Fashion Week (LFW) Winter/Festive 2014 collection of his label Rouka.
Inspired by garlands and showcasing a collage of flowers being threaded as offerings to deities as well as for ornamentation, the Kerala-based designer’s film not only managed to capture the earthy spirit of his collection, and illustrate the detailed nuances of his clothes, it went on to win a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh at LFW’s Fashion Films session. Hosted by celebrity stylist and Vogue magazine’s fashion director Anaita Shroff Adajania, the second edition of the fashion films forum constituted its first-ever prize and Jeevan’s offering, directed by fiancee and filmmaker Anoodha Kunnath, came up trumps.

And while Jeevan, a National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad) alumnus, may hold the distinction of having won the first-ever fashion film award on the prestigious platform, this isn’t the first film he has made. His GenNext debut at LFW in March had a quirky film accompanying the catwalk presentation, also directed by Kunnath. “For me, every collection is a storytelling process. So, last season it was the story of different people celebrating the rains, wherein we decided to forego models and make the clothes and fabrics the people instead. And this time, it’s a narrative of a girl going from the city to a temple town and tweaking her clothes in the process,” he says.

For Jeevan, the garland goes beyond something the protagonist weaves into her hair or offers in obeisance. “The garland is a metaphor for a simple, luxurious handmade product, for our indigenous craft traditions. You can go to Europe, but you’re not going to get flowers beautifully strung together for Rs. 10,” he explains.

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And while many of his peers such as Asa Kazingmei, Megha Garg, Lovebirds by Amrita Khanna and Gursi Singh, N&S Gaia by Siddharth Sinha and Arunima Majhi also showcased their films at the forum, what set Jeevan’s offering apart was its very organic integration of inspiration and style. “We were actually filming even as the collection progressed. So, it enriched the process of making the clothes.

The film is now becoming part of our language and process of developing the collection,” he says. Here’s to many more such moving images.