The Way We Wore

Designer HEMANT TREVEDI looks back at fashion in the Maximum City in the ’80s and ’90s, when Mumbai was still Bombay, supermodels were the real superstars, and fashion shows were a family affair

- Rachana Nakra

There was this one shop I would see every time I drove by Marine Lines— Mike Kirpalani’s Salwar Kameez. It was the only fashion boutique around at the time. If you wanted something else, you better had the means to travel abroad. Or you could trek all the way to the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Colaba where Catherine Courtney ran a small boutique called Madame Pompadour selling gowns. This was the fashion scene in India when I moved here from Australia in the late ’70s. All of 20, with long, streaked hair, boots and a silver belt, I walked into SNDT college in Juhu as a professor, my first real job.

The girls in class were all my age! After class they would come up to me and say, “Sir, will you come with us to Scorpius?” It was a popular discotheque in those days.