Jewels in the crown

When top designers want to embellish their creations with baubles, spangles and beads they find the craftsmanship they need in India

When top designers want to embellish their creations with baubles, spangles and beads they go to India, where the level of craftsmanship is second to none

You can see India’s beauty woven into Collette Dinnigan’s designs. Its beading dazzles in Alex Perry’s garments. And draws the eye to Megan Park’s intricate embroidery. There is plenty of Indian sizzle in Sass & Bide’s sexy creations. At Akira, it is woven like a whisper through each fibre. For Easton Pearson’s pulsating Summer 2008–09 collection, India’s influence ran riot like a monsoon wedding. By forging unique relationships with India’s fabric factories and artisans, Australian designers have elevated their collections beyond boundaries, and even the imagination.

For decades, the subcontinent’s opulent style and colour has inspired fashion designers everywhere. This has become much more commercial of late, with the global industry descending on India for its textiles, craftsmanship and manufacturing. The role it plays in the creative and business aspects of the multibillion-dollar fashion industry is apparent in the designs of Armani, Valentino, Gaultier, Dior, Dries Van Noten, Yves Saint Laurent and Ralph Lauren.

Such is the growth in India’s contribution that it’s snaring greater swathes of the world’s $US400 billion-a-year textile market. The World Trade Organisation has estimated that India’s slice of the US market alone will expand from four per cent in 2002 to 15 per cent by 2010, mainly by concentrating on high-end apparel. In Australia, our leading designers draw on its fabrics and artisans to lift their collections to another level. Each year, many make creative pilgrimages to India in search of the best beading, silks, colours and weaves.

“As one of the main producers of clothing and textiles in the world, the textile industry is huge within India and growing each year,” says designer Megan Park. She’s been working with specialist embroidery factories in India for the past 15 years, developing her ranges to include intricately beaded bags, shawls and homewares.

“The (embroiderers) are technically so brilliant and it’s been part of their culture for hundreds of years,” says evening wear impresario Alex Perry, who’s been visiting India for 10 years. “The incredible array of what you can have done there is extraordinary.”

Not quite the accidental tourist, Perry took 3½ years to find the ultimate beading factory. “It’s hard because you can’t pick up the Yellow Pages and speak to a hundred places and ask which designers do you work for,” he says. “It’s like a mission; you have to go there on safari. I literally stumbled across my factory. They were working on a Valentino summer collection. The people are second to none, and they’ve been working on designers like Versace and Valentino for 15 years. If you put my garment, beaded by these guys, next to any other, it is far superior.”

That is what top designers are able to do: take something and make it their own. They use the best artisans and manufacturers and interpret these skills into their own sensibility. To realise showstoppers such as his beaded dresses, Perry visits the country for two months each June and July.

“The difficult thing is that absolutely anything is possible and you are like a kid in a candy store,” Perry explains. “You are in a place where they create some of the most beautiful couture in the world and they will make you the most spectacular beading you’ve ever seen in your life to go on an evening gown.”

Sass & Bide’s Sarah-Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton also turn to India to conjure up their collections. “The Indian textile industry offers incredible range and expertise in handcrafted and handsewn embellishment. The intriguing culture of fashion and textiles in India is something we’ve been inspired by for a long time,” they say in a joint statement.

Akira Isogawa, who has travelled back and forth to the subcontinent for nearly a decade, says his relationship with India intensified when the world developed a taste for handcrafted and visually decadent fashion. India, with its rich cultural history and Bollywood cinema, felt in sync with a world turning away from minimalism.

“More designers are visiting India and realising what can be achieved over there,” says Isogawa. “In the mid-1990s minimalism was more popular and textile designers and fashion designers used more clean lines and were less textural. Then, in early 2000, designers realised there was a demand for handcraft and so more people started exploring fabric design and heavily beaded textiles.”

One of the things about Indian fashion is its diversity of styles and traditions. The choice of fabric and embroidered looks is endless, as Park has found. She conceptualises in Melbourne, but does the majority of her production in India. All this is done in collaboration with a company that produces not only Park’s collections but also many of the major European design houses, among them Prada and Paul Smith.

“My association with India goes beyond sourcing textiles,” says Park. “My small team and I spend nearly three months of every year in India working side by side with the artisans who create our collection.

“I love the spirit of the Indian people, who always believe that anything is possible and will never say never … their willingness to experiment has allowed what we do to evolve and mature each season. I love the fact that they are not daunted but, in fact, always rise to a challenge, which enables us to push forth with something new.”

Collette Dinnigan shows in Paris but the mix of femininity and luxury that prevails in her collections has rich undertones of India. She believes its artisans are the only people in the world who can actualise her designs. “I’m very tactile and I need to see everything in front of me,” Dinnigan says. “After I started going 12 years ago, Alaia (the label) started going as well."

Indians are now used to designers coming in but back when I first started travelling there it was quite unusual,” she continues. “Designers didn’t really go to India; they would have sourcing companies go over and get the embroidery done. But India is the only country that does the most incredible embroidery and handwork. China is very cost-efficient but doesn’t have the same level of artistry.”

There’s no doubt the emerging Indian aesthetic has infiltrated our style language and is now speaking volumes. Indeed, India’s creative optimism is so contagious that Australian design will resonate with its visual and technical excellence for some time to come.