Taking linen to the city of love

Designer Kaveri Lalchand tests international waters with her maiden show in Paris. She speaks about how it all began with the need to find clothes for herself.

August 31, 2016 04:29 pm | Updated October 18, 2016 12:39 pm IST - Chennai

Designer Kaveri Lalchand Photo: R. Ravindran

Designer Kaveri Lalchand Photo: R. Ravindran

Around five suitcases, a table cluttered with half-stitched garments, tapes, sequins and pins, and a line of hangers displaying finished linen shirts, pants and tunics. This is fashion designer (she prefers a more modest Kate Winslet-like ‘dressmaker’) Kaveri Lalchand’s manufacturing unit, located a floor below her studio, K Clothing, in Kodambakkam.

Dressed in a blue gown, one of her creations, she walks around her manufacturing unit, supervising the work of the 50-odd tailors busy fixing a button or patching an embroidery element onto the clothes that will travel to Paris for her first international show. “I’m leaving tomorrow, and the catalogues are yet to be done,” says Kaveri with a nervous laugh, as she cuts a heart out of a paprika-red cloth. “These hearts, they are my signature. You can find a small one embroidered in every creation,” adds the designer, popular for her plus-size wear.

Between September 2 and 5, Kaveri, along with a few other Indian designers such as Geisha Designs, Nandita Mahtani and Chennai-based Neesha Amrish, will showcase her collection at Who’s Next, a popular international fashion trade show for women’s wear in Europe. In its previous edition, the event saw over 50,000 visitors at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Centre in the city of love, and featured around 700 French and international ready-to-wear brands.

Visibly exhausted, Kaveri is back in her office to break for lunch, a portion of which she insists I share. Between eating spoons of rice, black beans and salad, and ignoring a constant flood of messages, she says, “I have done trunk and pop-up shows all over the country, travelled to places such as Kanpur, Nagpur, Lucknow and Zirakpur, and retailed out of Meerut, Raipur, Baroda, Kanpur and Indore, besides metros like Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. A month or two ago, I realised that it was time for me to probably go international... and I made it happen.”

It was a tedious process. After research, which included interactions with friends in London and friends of friends working in popular lifestyle brands such as Elle, she was convinced that the festival was worth a shot. “So, I sent my application, a set of samples of my creations and another of photographs; met the representative of the festival in Mumbai, and signed the deal — all in a month’s time,” she says in one breath.

At the event, Kaveri will show her Spring Summer 2017 collection, which includes the Ayur Linen range made out of colours derived from holy basil (tulsi) and turmeric (haldi); and The Weaving Gold Series, which deploys the age-old rogan printing technique that uses a thick paste of metallic colours, about which Kaveri learnt during one of her recent travels to the interiors of Gujarat.

“I’m always on the road. I manufacture in Chennai, but pack my garments in a bag, and take off to places to sell them. People and places influence my work. In a way, I am a travelling salesman,” she says. Only this time, she is going a tad far.

Her collection, tailor-made for Indian women “who have childbearing hips and an hourglass figure”, has been tweaked for her European clients.

“I pulled out the European size chart from the Internet. One marked difference is that Indian women have narrower shoulders. Besides, Europeans have a straighter figure,” she says.

There is no change in the material, though. “I have always worked with linen. Linen is an international fabric, as opposed to organdie or Maheshwari. I use Indian designs but European colours and cuts. I have experimented with tie and dye, Rajasthani lehariya, rogan printing, and kolam embroidery motifs…” says the designer, who is also into theatre and art.

One of her most challenging projects, still in progress, has been to use traditional ikat techniques and Uzbekistani ikat designs on naturally-dyed linen.While on a constant pursuit to try different techniques, Kaveri makes it a point to remember why she started the venture in the first place. “... because I couldn’t find clothes that fit me. Fortunately, my dad ran a garment manufacturing unit that exported around 10,000 garments a month. I had constant access to tailors and clothes. So, I started making clothes for myself while still young,” she recalls.

Like how Amy Adams stitches gowns out of curtains in Enchanted , Kaveri used curtains, her mother’s saris, and even bedsheets to create shirts that she knew would fit her perfectly.What she did not know was that she would develop a fan following.

“Soon, I found myself making a dress for a friend, and then 10 others, then 40… the numbers grew. I realised I was helping women who had body-image issues — those who wanted to wear stylish clothes, but were constantly wondering if their tummies were jutting out. I designed clothes that made them feel comfortable in their own skin, even while they chilled, jumped or danced,” she says.

At her first exhibition in Mumbai soon after she started the brand in 2011, she sold 270 of the 300 garments that she displayed. Kaveri realised the huge market for her products.These days, her calendar is booked for the entire year. Her profession demands 12 hours of work at the unit a day when in Chennai, and 20 days of travel a month.

“The ideas for new designs run 24x7 inside my head, and I’m constantly segregating ‘things to do’ into different lists based on the urgency. On a typical day, I wake up at 7.30 a.m., meditate for a bit, go to the temple, and don’t talk to anybody till I step into work at 9 a.m. Then, it’s a whirlwind of activity, till I am back home at 7.30 p.m.,” she says. “But I manage to keep my calm with a game or two of Candy Crush (she is at level 1906),” she adds with a wink.

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