MAKING THE OLD BOLD
I nearly fell off my chair when a cluster of models wearing saris designed by Masaba Gupta for Satya Paul hit the runway at the Splendid India Closet show. I’ve never seen anything like them. They use large-scale contemporary graphics to highlight the garment’s classically fluid, draped form. Masaba’s most recent collection takes pop imagery including road maps, phone booths, and lipstick tubes and smears, and prints them on gauzy silk chiffon. I can only imagine the drama that erupts when a woman wearing a lipstick sari walks into a cocktail party in Mumbai. Surely she makes it clear that she is the wittiest, most modern, and elegantly appointed woman in the room.
A sari is, very simply, a six-yard length of 44"-wide fabric. It’s the way it’s draped and folded and tucked that gives it its dynamic, graceful shape. So to incorporate a sizeable graphic, rather than a small, all-over pattern, it’s necessary to plot out where every bit of fabric will land on the figure, how it will fall, and how it will move as a women walks in it. Masaba plays with ombre, incorporating long stretches of dove grey, bubble gum pink and electric yellow that accentuate, in turn, hips, legs and shoulders. She adds contrasting hot pink and cherry red borders to set off stark black and white motifs. And she sets the boldest graphics on the length that winds across the front of the torso rather than saving it for the pulloo, the end that falls freely over the shoulder and that, typically, receives the most specialized decoration. The graphics she selects are bold and loaded with pop cultural references (Warhol, Picasso, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist), but they don’t distract from the garment’s traditional silhouette. Masaba is executing centuries-old draping, masterfully, in a style that’s audaciously contemporary.
Ombre Grey Digital-Print Lipstick Saree by Masaba Gupta, 2014. Image courtesy of Satya Paul.