Haute highs on colourful Day 2

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VINDICATION WAS the name of the game on Day 2 of the LFW 2011 Summer Resort season. If Day 1 had been a relatively dull day, with no standout collections apart from that of Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Saturday saw fashion go up several notches with brilliant collections by designers Jatin Varma and the up-and-coming Shivan-Naresh.

The morning started with the troika of Jelin George, a GenNext designer from a previous edition of LFW, Pam and Arch London, and Sabbah Sharma. While the collections were well-received on the whole, it was Sabbah’s “controlled glitter” line of sleek pants, shorts, dresses and jackets that had fashion watchers talking.
As the afternoon shows progressed, it was time for some serious fashion as the main show area began filling up with people, compared to the half-hearted smattering that had peopled the morning event. And their presence was certainly rewarded with the first entry of Jatin Varma’s collection. The designer stuck to presenting knee and floor-length ruched and ruffled dresses in four mouth-watering colours — off white, watermelon pink, azure blue and a mango yellow. Revealing that his collection was inspired by everybody’s favourite dessert, the Italian Gelato, the designer said, “I chose luxurious fabrics like silk organza and silk taffeta fabrics to offset the luscious colours of the gelato”.
After the solid colours of Varma’s line, Vivek Karunakaran’s basic whites, lined with bright orange and red presented an interesting contrast. Interesting points in the collection included a white and red-striped shift with a Peter Pan collar and other shift dresses with scalloped collars.
Solid colour blocks continued with the late afternoon shows by Masaba and Shivan and Naresh. Masaba’s show, which saw parents Neena Gupta and Vivian Richards in the front row sitting alongside Mugdha Godse, featured elaborate, colourful headgear, dressed in contrasting shades, like purple with yellow and blue with red. Her final outfit was a swirling anarkali in sheer black, edged at the throat and hem with gold and spotted with large pink polka dots on the skirt. Masaba said her collection was her take on the Masabi tribe. “I call this collection ‘Straight from my Soil’. I decided to focus on the other part of my heritage with this collection.”
Swimwear designers Shivan and Naresh, however, decided to do away with geographical boundaries altogether with their collection. “Our clothes are the kind of things you would wear on a holiday,” said the designers of the maillots, bikinis, pants and hotpants in their collection. “And people dress the same on a holiday no matter where they’re from.” The collection was high on candy tones, with their trademark black, beige and blue giving way to scarlet red, bubblegum pink and cerulean blue. Candice Pinto rocked a red bandeau top, paired with white pants and a short jacket to set the tone for the designer duo’s collection, titled “Vanilla”. But the attention on Day 2 was most of all reserved for accessories designer Little Shilpa.
Manish Malhotra had a late night show scheduled for Day 2.