Stitch perfect

Ritu Kumar began making clothes 55 years ago. After almost a decade, she will be showing at the India Couture Week

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

At the splendid ‘India in Fashion’ exhibition, curated by the acclaimed Hamish Bowles for the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC), one outfit in particular made you stand and stare in gobsmacked awe. In a room full of extraordinary clothes made by extraordinary people—Alexander McQueen, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, and our own Abu Jani-Sandeep Khosla, Tarun Tahiliani, Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Anuradha Vakil—an all-white ensemble made by Ritu Kumar was unusual in its understated glory.

The anarkali and gharara was made for the ‘haldi’ ceremony of actor Athiya Shetty’s wedding to cricketer K.L. Rahul earlier this year. It was the reproduction of a 15-year-old archive, a ‘jugalbandi’ between Kumar and Martand ‘Mapu’ Singh, where the textile historian and curator had asked the couturier to make something with white handspun khadi. She found the finest matte khadi from Jaipur and Benares, and teamed it with gold and silver zardozi and gota embroidery, inspired by motifs from the 19th century. Kumar made just two or three versions of this as she says it was too beautiful to put in a store. The outfit almost whispered ‘the queen is still the queen’.

Kumar has been making clothes for close to 55 years. That is longer than anyone else in the country. It is even before the terms ‘fashion’, ‘designer’ or ‘retail’ became part of India’s vocabulary. What did she call herself at the time then? “I called myself nothing, I was just making printed scarves and saris. Mapu and I were barefoot doctors in the field. We wore Kolhapuri chappals and kurtas, and that’s how we worked,” Kumar, 77, says with a laugh.