Sabyasachi Mukherjee breaks own rules, goes boho

By Shilpa Raina, Mumbai, March 6 : Designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, bored with his trademark designs, went the bohemian way with his creations at the Lakme Fashion Week here. And he once again proved that he didn't need a celebrity walking the ramp to attract a crowd as audience.

Bollywood actors Vidya Balan and Rahul Bose cheered for the designer along with the audience at the show Friday, as Sabyasachi's bohemian collection took everyone by surprise.

For this show, the designer broke his own rules and showcased a few transparent skirts with the underpants showing, a lot of bling and heavily embroidered and sequined dresses - a big shift from his trademark style.

The Kolkata-based designer called this experiment a "mid-life crisis".

"All my years I have been experimenting with the same designs. I personally feel that my collections had gone reasonably boring in the past few years and I needed to get away from that. I feel that I should have come up with this collection five years back," Sabyasachi told IANS after the post show conference.

"Sometimes there are a lot of things that are not of your sensibility...like edgy clothes or showing undergarments. But this time I wanted to create something that was bohemian, magical, sentimental yet very fun," he said.

For this summer/resort line, the designer has taken inspiration from the 70s rockstar look. The models wore bandanas, red sunglasses, chunky jewellery, platform sandals and a trademark small black dot (bindi) on their forehead.

The collection comprised long skirts, floor-touching dresses, elongated t-shirts and loose trousers as well.

Calling the collection "contemporary", the designer said: "Each piece can be treated individually. You just need to mix and match and the outfit is ready. It is very contemporary and chic."

The show was divided into two segments - soul curry and chicken curry.

While the latter was full of bold colours and heavy on appliques, bling and sequins, the former collection had muted colours with block prints and hand-embroidered garments.