The aboriginal time that designers David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore showed at the India Appearance Week was in 2010. They beatific a archetypal bottomward the admission cutting a atramentous handloom sari, belted and beat able-bodied aloft the abate “because we were arena with proportion”, angry deeply as if to leave its acceptable apathy behind, and commutual with abundant belvedere clogs. It was abolitionist and edgy. The affected acceptable array of India had absolved into the apple of aerial appearance with a adventurous new confidence.
“I bethink anybody was a bit abashed because, one, we were accomplishing our aboriginal appearance in India and, two, we had opened a appearance appearance with a sari,” says Abraham.
He, forth with Thakore and Kevin Nigli—their third and lesser-known partner, who has been with them aback the beginning—had launched their appearance label, Abraham & Thakore (A&T), about two decades ago, in 1992.
Last month, we met them at their atelier in Noida, abutting Delhi. Their anatomy of assignment reflects, on the one hand, the adventure of the Indian appearance industry, and on the other, tells the adventure of outsiders who accept silently pushed the boundaries of appearance in India. Their assignment is adumbrative of a move away from the awful ornate, acceptable average of Indian appearance to an all-embracing artful that is based in the bolt ancestry of India but not bound by it.
Rakesh Thakore (right) and David Abraham. Photo: Priyanka Parashar/Mint
Their Noida branch is a three-floor amplitude with tailors, karigars (craftsmen) and pattern-cutters action about their work. Bolt scrolls lie bisected continued on the floor, colour swatches are affianced on to affection boards, couture pieces adhere on rails, some 25 years old and others prototypes of new collections. Abraham—the ad-lib and balmy artistic administrator of the company—visualizes and affairs the collections for ceremony season. Dressed in a fleet dejected Mandarin-collar shirt jacket, his acute arid abaft his hip orange comedy frames is set off by his accessible laughter. He takes the advance in this conversation. Thakore, tall, angular and aciculate in complete black, completes sentences and fills gaps in anamnesis in the conversation. He takes affliction of bolt addition and production. Nigli, sitting at a distance, listens, alms accurateness of dates and events. His role involves administering sales initiatives and ensuring the product’s bartering viability.
In agreement of aesthetics, A&T’s bulk is bedeviled by a atramentous and white combination. It is a signature that has apparent far too abounding rip-offs to count. Thakore pulls out a beauteous adverse bandage from the balustrade abaft his desk: “This allotment is 25 years old, but you’ll acquisition it all over Dilli Haat,” he says, unfazed. Animate in handloom and with acceptable bolt is their forte. They’ve congenital a convenance by reinventing Ikat, Jamdani and able cottons by engineering the weaves. And, best significantly, they architecture for a “refined woman”, in the words of Tina Tahiliani Parikh, the architect of Ensemble, India’s aboriginal artist boutique—which itself completes 30 years this year. Tahiliani Parikh began assuming A&T at Ensemble in 1993, and recalls how they stood out from the bling, the artful that was alpha to booty basis in India in the aboriginal 1990s. “People afresh were not attractive at our civil ancestry as article actual fashionable. They acquainted that they had to booty a apparel and do huge amounts of value-add on top of it. Whereas A&T did the value-add in the bolt itself, in the sewing, and the shape. It was simple, aerial affection and had a affectionate of quiet elegance,” says Parikh in a buzz interview.
Their admixture of change and attitude has admiring the absorption of museums and curators. A affecting houndstooth bifold Ikat cottony sari from their 2011 accumulating was allotment of a Victoria and Albert Architecture (V&A) exhibition blue-blooded The Bolt Of India, captivated from October 2015 to January 2016 in London. Divia Patel, babysitter at the architecture and columnist of the book India—Contemporary Design: Fashion, Graphics, Interiors (Lustre, 2014), writes on email: “A&T accept the adeptness to accomplish a account about appearance that goes above abstract embellishment, absorption instead on architecture a signature appearance of a adventurous and basal colour palette, simple patterns and handloom fabrics. The houndstooth sari stands for all these things. It could alone accept appear from a flat with such ability and aplomb at the affection of it, respectfully accumulation the accomplishment of the artisan with the administration of the designer.”
In the bosom of cultural exploration, A&T brings a assertive backbone to fashion. One of their latest collections includes a bag, a bandage and a bathrobe fabricated in a gold blinking antithesis that prints the cast of iconic appearance labels like CD of Christian Dior, CK of Calvin Klein and A&T itself, in arresting gold Devanagari script. A&T is as fun as it is affected and determined.
“It hasn’t been easy,” says Abraham. “The aboriginal 10 years were a battle. Nobody capital to blow anything. They would think, ‘what is this arid handloom stuff?’ We had to be thick-skinned. But we were advantageous because we had an consign business to abatement aback on. The all-embracing chump accepted it. They would pay for a rough-looking Khadi shirt. That’s why we survived. If we had alone been in India, we would accept had to do lehngas covered in Zardozi,” says Abraham.
As we sit bottomward in their active appointment on a blurred November day in Delhi, they acquaint us their story, one that has been apparent by the ups and downs of business and alteration economies, the trials of designing for an ambiguous consumer, and architecture a convenance that confronts appearance with questions of identity: who we are, who we’re designing for, and what Indian architecture is.
Sequinned tote in absolute felt, Autumn/Winter 2009-10. Courtesy Abraham and Thakore
The pre-A&T days
Abraham, who grew up in Singapore and Bengaluru, and Thakore, who grew up in Tanzania, Delhi and Indore, met at the Civic Institute of Architecture (NID), Ahmedabad, area they were belief bolt architecture in 1975.
“That’s area it all started,” remembers Abraham. NID was, and still is, a abode area architecture is able aural a able amusing context. Subjects like bolt and appearance are able with a focus on ethnographic study. “There was this attitude at NID that you had to be affianced with political issues of civic identity. That to be a designer, you should attending at your ambience and be acute to it,” says Abraham. “Do you bethink Bhandari’s projects—we had to go to these bastis (low-income neighbourhoods) and account their lives?” Abraham asks Thakore. “It was alleged ecology acknowledgment or article like that.” Their capital accountable of study, the bolt of India, was able by a Finnish designer, Helena Perheentupa. “It’s funny that a greenhorn had to appear advise us about our own textiles,” says Thakore.
Ahmedabad is home to the Calico Architecture of Textiles, “so we had admission to the richest resource”, says Abraham. Towards the end of his assignment at NID, Thakore formed alongside the backward Martand Singh—affectionately accepted as Mapu—on a alternation of touring exhibitions from 1982-92 that showcased the bolt ancestry of India to the West. “I had aloof appear out of NID and I began to assignment with Mapu on the Festival Of India, the Master Weavers exhibition and Vishwakarma series. They toured from the Royal College of Art in London, followed by Paris, to the Metropolitan Architecture of Art (Met) in New York, amid added places. While still in NID, I had gone to Andhra (Pradesh) to do my ability affidavit on Ikat and Chirala’s Rumal (Thakore continues to assignment abundantly on Ikat). Aback Mapu began travelling to Andhra, he apparent that I was amphibian around, and was afraid that addition had gone there afore he did,” Thakore recalls. “From afresh on, I formed alongside him. He was a aces actuality and gave you the abandon and amplitude to do what you capital in agreement of design.”
Coming from different, advantaged backgrounds (“blinkered”, in the words of Abraham) and acquirements the bolt crafts of India at NID—those roots are axiomatic in the avenue that the artist characterization eventually took. Dressing adapted to a ability and climate, award an Indian appearance character that is above the indigenous stereotype, accepting a baby assembly run and application craftspeople as abundant as possible—that’s A&T in a nutshell. “When I anticipate about those aboriginal canicule at NID, they accept a lot to do with how I attending at appearance now. That’s area our ethics appear from and I’m accepting added bad-humored about it as I’m accepting older,” says Abraham. Thakore agilely corrects, “getting added affianced with it”.
While the ancestry lay in compassionate the aesthetics of their home country, that did not bind Abraham and Thakore from attractive outward. By the time they accelerating from NID, Thakore had amorphous animate with Mapu. As allotment of a altered project, he advised a accumulating of atramentous and white Ikats for the iconic Japanese artist Issey Miyake. And Abraham spent several years with the New York-based accouterment aggregation Sandy Starkman. Amid 1991-92, he formed abandoned beneath the characterization David Abraham, which awash through authoritative food like Fred Hayman and Bergdorf Goodman.
Those were the canicule aback Rajesh Pratap Singh—today an able artist in his own right—had aloof accelerating from Sri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi. “I charge accept been 19 and I interned with David. (Now) I accumulate cogent them that I was aloof the archetype boy and we beam about it,” says Singh. “We were all afraid of David. He was a actual austere man, actual disciplined. For me, it was like ablution by fire,” he adds. Singh, abandoning Abraham and Thakore’s assignment from the time, says: “David was accomplishing a lot of colour, the best admirable abstract dresses I’ve anytime seen. I bethink already the affectation windows of Bergdorf Goodman, New York, were all by David Abraham. It was absolutely rad stuff. Both David and Rakesh had this affection with things that didn’t absolutely abide yet”.
A shirt from the aboriginal 1990s.
Taking A&T abroad
In 1992, Abraham and Thakore founded their label. Their third partner, Nigli, a alum of the Civic Institute of Appearance Technology, abutting six months later. “For the aboriginal 10 years, we absolutely had annihilation to advertise in India because there was no absolute market,” says Abraham.
A&T started by affairs textile-based accessories like kimonos and scarves, afresh went into home collections and, finally, fashion, at The Conran Shop, a high-end curated bazaar in London founded in 1974. That bound to London was due to a advantageous about-face of events. “When we started, John Bissell (founder of Fabindia) was still alive. He was an abundantly acceptable man. One day, he said, ‘I’m bringing addition over,’ and it was Polly (Dickens), the affairs administrator of The Conran Shop. She bought some of our pieces and we never looked back. One affair led to another. I accept a friend, Sue (Holt), who lives in London, she alien us to the buyer of Browns (at the time a arch bazaar abundance in London). She added affiliated us to Tricia Guild, who endemic Designers Brotherhood in London.
Hole-punched slides from the aboriginal 2000s.
“It grew organically. We didn’t accept a plan. The alone action we had, which I absolutely fought for adapted from the beginning, was that I banned to characterization our articles beneath any added name. These buyers were not acclimated to Indian brands. So they would ask us to put The Conran Shop label, for instance. But we said, ‘you buy it as A&T or we don’t appear in at all.’ You know, we were so baby we could be arrogant. We had annihilation to lose,” says Abraham.“So every year we acclimated to go with a bag of samples to London. We were lucky. We were small. It was a blessed business,” he adds.
What formed in their favour was that A&T was giving London what it couldn’t accomplish itself. Handloom bolt from Phulia and Maheshwar, affection Ikat from Andhra, alloyed by duke and cut in wearable, all-embracing styles.
Both Abraham and Thakore are weavers themselves. “We had our little looms aback we were at NID. I hated it,” says Abraham. “I admired it,” adds Thakore. “But what helped was that we could braid baby quantities, like 50m. We could do the minimum and these top shops adopted tiny quantities. We were ill-fitted altogether for that,” says Abraham.
Creating baby quantities is a appropriate inherent in the handloom industry. And to see it as ambiguous is a absurdity that shapes the acumen and action of the handloom industry in our country. For handloom to imitate apparatus work, or to aspire to actualize quantities that a powerloom can, is counterproductive to what handlooms accept to offer: qualities bigger ill-fitted to the luxury, not accumulation market.
A&T has congenital a convenance pivoted on this small-run, adjustable assembly archetypal of handloom, of creating one-off garments, area no two pieces are absolutely the same. Abraham stresses on the achievability of still actuality able to do that in India. “The Indian appearance artist is the best advantaged artist in the world. In no added country can a artist go and book or braid article as baby as 10m of fabric. Nowhere else. Japan is impossible. It’s gone. Died. They’ll do a little bit of Shibori. Indonesia maybe, but their ambit of ability is bound to Ikats and batiks. In London, annihilation but a little bit of tweed maybe. No admiration you’re seeing an access of agenda press there, because they can’t accomplish annihilation by hand. But in India, any artist can go to a ability array or apple and say, ‘I accept Rs10,000, can you braid so abundant bolt for me?’” says Abraham.
A&T continues to assignment with the ability clusters that it began with 25 years ago: Ikat from Andhra, Jamdani, and able cottons from Bengal, Mangalagiri, 100% cotton, afresh from Andhra, affection from Maheshwar, Bandhani from Kutch and Bhuj.
Internationally, it went on to advertise in shops like Selfridges, Harrods and Liberty in London, and was a approved at barter shows, like Maison&Objet in Paris, area affairs brands converge. “But the 2008 bread-and-butter abatement hit bodies like us actual badly,” says Abraham.
The Indian appearance artist is the best advantaged artist in the world. In no added country can a artist go and book or braid article as baby as 10m of fabric.- David Abraham
Homeward bound
Meanwhile, in India, curated artist boutiques like Ensemble and Ogaan were award their feet. Ensemble was assuming designers such as Rohit Khosla, Rohit Bal, Asha Sarabhai, Tarun Tahiliani and Monisha Jaisingh, followed by JJ Valaya and Ashish Soni.
By 2000, the official India Appearance Week, organized by the Appearance Architecture Council of India (FDCI), had taken off. At the time, it was alleged Lakmé India Appearance Week, and it was adorning designers into creating collections in accordance with seasons—starting with one a year and accretion to alert a year, a spring/summer and autumn/winter.
In 2002, A&T attempted to sow the seeds of appearance retail in India by ambience up One MG Road, India’s aboriginal artist mall, in the fast-developing MG Road suburb of Delhi. “Four of us—Rajesh Pratap Singh, Neeru Kumar, Manish Arora and we—got calm and opened at One MG Road because we all acquainted that we charge to alpha affairs properly,” says Thakore. Later, others abutting them, including JJ Valaya, Suneet Verma, Narender Kumar, Rana Gill and Anju Modi, operating abundant like a crafts brotherhood that is based in association and announcement ceremony added rather than action as an industry apparent by competitiveness. “We were all friends. We trusted ceremony other,” says Abraham.
Four years later, One MG Road bankrupt bottomward afterwards a annihilation drive that razed shops and structures. “We went in the average of the night to booty out all our stuff. It was terrible,” says Thakore.
It was in 2010 that A&T aboriginal took the admission with what was alleged the Wills India Appearance Week. They had absolutely accustomed in India afterwards 18 years of fine-tuning their aesthetic.
Abraham, however, recalls the challenges in authoritative the alteration from a adopted chump to an Indian one. “When we confused focus to India, afar from the sari collection, by and large, what we were authoritative and affairs away was the commodity we were putting in our India shops. That’s area the battle began for me. The accord amid the two markets is difficult and it makes you actual schizoid—we didn’t absolutely advance a specific Indian architecture sensibility,” he says.
But India tugged agilely at their hearts. “After a while, it acquainted easier to architecture for a chump you know. Aback you’re designing for a absolutely altered culture, you tend to accept to accept a lot. We didn’t abound up with our mothers cutting coats and stockings. I consistently acquainted that it was a accent you had to apprentice and it continues to baffle me,” says Abraham.
He calls absorption to the Indian woman’s celebrated appetence for bolt and fashion. “If you attending at your mother’s generation, they would acquaint the tailor, go to the raffoo wala (for darning), go to the dye wala (dyer), they knew which actuality to go to in Kanchipuram, which actuality in Varanasi. This is allotment of who we are and it’s not been lost. Aback girls get affiliated now, for one year they are active about accepting every blood-soaked braid in the country. In India, our accord with bolt is actual different,” says Abraham. “Look at all these Punjabi ladies in Delhi; aback winter comes, all the admirable pashminas appear out,” says Thakore. “And their shahtoosh shawls which they are not declared to wear,” action Abraham.
(from left) David Abraham, Kevin Nigli and Rakesh Thakore at their Noida appointment in 2014. Courtesy Abraham and Thakore
Vibe of the future
As we allocution about their approaching course, there is a cord of action planned about their 25th anniversary. Currently A&T has two food in Delhi and Bengaluru and retail through multi-designer boutiques such as Ensemble, Atosa, Bungalow 8, Amethyst and Ogaan. In the advancing years, it intends to access its retail attendance in the country—“but not too abundant because we appetite to absorb our small-run assembly model,” says Abraham. “More so, we plan to body our online presence. It’s acute these days.” The label’s Instagram is a beautiful—quite active—collection of pictures that captures its essence. The aggregation already produces bolt and uniforms for accommodation ally like the Taj accumulation and The Oberoi. It is now accomplishment ties with a affluence wellness retreat in Dehradun, Vana. “We plan to assignment carefully with Vana in the areas of architecture for bolt and attire,” says Abraham. In addition absorbing project, A&T has collaborated with the celebrated rug-maker Obeetee. Adding to a accumulating alleged Proud To Be Indian (which has ahead been done in accord with Tarun Tahiliani, addition iconic designer), on 13 December, A&T will be presenting a bound copy of carpets aggressive by block print, Bandhani, Ikat and calligraphy.
To mark this milestone, Delhi-based babysitter Mayank Mansingh Kaul is putting calm a attendant of their assignment in the advancing months, “not absolutely like a chronology, but to highlight alternating beheld and actual account that the cast has consistently alternate to”, says Kaul.
Reflecting on their path, and that of the beyond artist community, Abraham and Thakore are acquainted of how they bury themselves in the beyond appearance mural of India. “The artist industry is aloof a bead in the ocean. But it’s influential. Definitely abundant added affecting than its size. Go to Chandni Chowk and you’ll acquisition bisected the guys are artful Sabyasachi,” says Abraham. Their own atramentous and white signature artful is ubiquitous.
Their annotation on what the approaching holds for appearance in India is added absolute than critical. “All these adolescent designers are accomplishing such absorbing work. Attending at all the Lovebirds and Doodlage and those two boys from NID animate with abide dye, I can’t bethink their names,” says Abraham. “Interestingly, they’re all axis to handloom,” addendum Thakore. “And they are attractive at a amplitude which is not the bells market. To me, that’s actual interesting,” adds Abraham.
Today, with a cord of accustomed designers like Anavila Misra, Eká by Rina Singh, péro by Aneeth Arora, Rajesh Pratap Singh (the closing two are protégés of A&T), Indian appearance may accept accomplished a analytical accumulation with handloom, with muted, bawdy colours, creating what ability best be declared as chaste glamour. But to be the aboriginal to do it, afore its amount has been established, takes a committed antipathy that Abraham and Thakore accept apparent in abundant measure. They don’t absolutely clear it in words, but a faculty of comfort comes through. The ethics that they founded their characterization in, adequate and nurtured, are arising acerb in the bolt of appearance in India.
Five A&T looks from India Appearance Weeks
“At the time (2011), I was absorbed in exploring menswear through an Indian woman’s perspective,” says Abraham. The accumulating looked at European menswear weaves like the houndstooth, twill, herringbone and re-invented them with Indian bolt traditions like Ikat and block printing. The sari became a allotment of the Victoria & Albert Museum’s collection
For this Autumn/Winter 2010 collection, A&T replaced bolt motifs such as the paisley with acclamation motifs like the rickshaw, blast and bicycle. They opened the appearance with a belted atramentous handloom sari with a argent bound and a cycle-rickshaw motif.
This bobcat adornment sari is from the 2014-15 collection. Not printed, but woven, the alluring leopard-print sari was fabricated in Tussar cottony and afresh brocaded. “For this, we formed with agrarian silk. Everywhere in the world, cottony is cultivated, except here,” says Abraham.
For the 2017 collection, Jamdani and Ikat bolt was handwoven in bolt centres in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. The accumulating provided separates in authentic cotton, alms applied alternatives to the animate burghal Indian woman who cares for appearance that draws on tradition.
In the 2018 collection, copse block became a starting point in designs that focused on the abnormality of the handmade textile. Rather than incise forms and motifs on a copse block, A&T acclimated the uncarved block to actualize solid colour surfaces.
First Published: Sat, Dec 09 2017. 09 18 AM IST
