TRIBUTE - Master of drapes

A few designers decode Satya Paul’s legacy and influence in fashion

- ANJULY MATHAI

To be creative means to be in love with life,” Osho once said. “You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” Osho might well have been describing a loyal follower’s creations. A Satya Paul sari encompassed all of this—poetry, beauty, music, dance…. His saris were conceptually strong, technically sound and imaginatively rich. But what elevated them was something else, that elusive quality that Paul himself was seeking all his life. His saris had soul.

Paul, who died on January 6 at the age of 79, was born in Leigha, Pakistan, and came to India during the Partition. He is credited with starting L’Affaire, India’s first sari boutique, in 1980. His spirituality spurred his creativity. In fact, it was upon his return from the Osho commune in Oregon—where he had gone with his family in 1982, after selling his export business—that he entered a phase of unbridled creativity. Subsequently, he launched his brand in 1985. He viewed life as a playground of ideas, and was inspired by everything from Japanese calligraphy, Picasso paintings and the Ramayan to Disney films and Calvin and Hobbes comic strips….