An Indian designer in New Delhi has turned his clothes into a platform for environmental protection and a model of craftsmanship.
Handmade clothes like a unique work of art. make no mistake, it is quite rare in the fashion world. The uniqueness comes from the demands of the Haute Couture label, not the ready-to-wear. In a time of a fully robotized industry designed to produce faster and faster, Sonam Khetan is moving forward as an iconoclast. This young 33-year-old Indian designer advocates a carnal, artisanal, slowed-down and therefore militant relationship with clothing. All this from New Delhi, where she lives and set up her design studio to work with local textile producers and Indian know-how.
Naturally dyed cloud coat. sonam khetan
His business started in 2019. At that time, the Amazon and Australian forest fires were raging and making him nervous. Sonam Khetan documents herself, reads everything she can on the subject. The successive news, the alarming reports of NGOs, the writings of scientists about the mechanisms of forest formation… Everything is going. “I told myself there was still a lot to learn. This was one of the levers for launching my brand,” he explains in a video interview from his studio in Delhi. The 30-year-old textile design specialist has already made her mark in the luxury world (she works for Balmain, among others), but wants to speak the language of fashion, both artisanal and organic, to the press. And his thought is exciting. her latest collection is a subtle application of traditional embroidery, natural ancestral weaving and dyeing techniques, as well as semantics around the earth’s ecosystem in hopes of awakening environmental awareness. Her clothes are paintings, some inspired by existing works by contemporary photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto or 19th-century Japanese painter and engraver Hiroshige. They tell us what’s going on above us: the fog, the monsoon, the sudden rains, the blue sky, the wind, the cloud forests, but also the seeds carried by the winds and lightning that need moisture to survive, like so many others. kinds.
Silk shirt tie-dyed using the Japanese tesuji technique. sonam khetan
Itinerant affairs
Meteorological phenomena seen in India have dropped on dresses, coats, two-piece suits, bombers. Each piece is a walking work. a simple look at the dress is enough to understand that it required hours, even days, of virtuoso “small hands”. The work is nested in embroideries (illustrating the famous bay flowers, a river that flows in the Amazon, showers that sometimes hide a message in Morse code), with a touch of silk, woven and spun by hand (using the khadi technique, provided). by Gandhi to date) or in temples and in hand painting with flowers picked from coconut skins.
Sonam Khetan doesn’t run after fashion and trends, even if we have spotted one or two sheer tops that are very modern. In his creations, the designer puts joy, patience and collegial work. “Each garment has a hand-embroidered label with the names of the artisans involved in making it,” explains the designer. No more than one hundred copies per model. Proof if needed that we are here at the intersection of craftsmanship, art and fashion. Definitely a sign of free and sensitive fashion.
In the video: the transparent dress, the sources of the planetary phenomenon
Source: Le Figaro
