Photoshoot|bhane.

Pronounced as bha-nay. Means sunrise in Gurmukhi. I did a ‘street style inspired’ shoot for them sometime in October 2012. We shot on the streets of Delhi(mostly south)…with old & urban structures as backdrops, in bylanes & back lanes, in parks & markets…

Delhi is beautiful; well, some of it. 15 years ago while growing up in Delhi I thought I’d never be able to leave the place. It was greener, and there were lesser cars and lesser people. It’s changed quite a bit now – there are more malls, many more flyovers, traffic jams are longer, & everything looks too clean like the entire city is trying to hide something. Some places look like they are about to explode..

However, it’s still amazing in winters, its back alleys have great character, and some areas still look the same as they did 15 years ago…

Models: Kaka. Aditi. Odette. Carol. Pranav. Richa. Arshia. Shoot styled by Tiny.

bhane clothes are simple and nice. Look them up here +credits(stuff used in the shoot). Read more about them here & here.

Elton Fernandez|Art of the Trench

Elton Fernandez. Make-up artist/hair stylist.

Photographed in Bandra in 2011. These photos are from the Art of the Trench project I worked on for Burberry about a year agi. I’m currently in the process of putting them all up.

A collaboration & a curtain.

Sometime last year, I worked with people from Somesuch & Co. & BMB agency on a project for Cobra beer. They were shooting Cobra tv commercial in Bombay meant for UK television+making a city guide on fashion, food, and music for The Guardian website.

I was one of the collaborators along with B.L.O.T. & Vandana Verma(watch their films here & here). All 3 short films were directed by George Belfield & shot by Simon Pinfield.

The city guide on fashion that I worked on is here. Link. It has nervous me talking about what I do on this blog..+ shooting a lookbook for Nor Black Nor White in Dadar flower market, talking to Bandana Tewari & Little Shilpa..and just generally hanging out on the streets..

Little Shilpa’s work desk.
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Priyanka Bose in NorBlackNorWhite at Dadar Flower Market.

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Simon & George at Simon & George in Colaba.
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I also did street casting for the tv commerical(I’m also in it), & was helped by my friend Paloma(she knew all the ‘coolest’ kids).

Alisha Netalkar. Trey Munroe. Shreya Dube. Gitanjali Dang. Rahul Chhab.
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At the trials/auditions in Versova.

This boy is wearing his own stuff.

Daniel Wolfe filming AJ at the trials.
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On the day of the shoot. 6a.m. call time. This is at 7.

Kanakee.

Namita Sekhar.

Rachel Bayros.

Vandana Verma.

Amrita Bagchi.

Saurabh Saple.

Most of the TVC was shot at VT station, on a moving train, & at an abandoned station about 3 hours away from Bombay.

After 40 days of field work and two months of post-production, the video is finally up. It’s called The Train. Watch it here. Directed by Daniel Wolfe, ex-chef, also known as the “problem director.” Styled by Hannah Edwards, who also recently styled MIA’s Bad Girls video.

It’s too late to call this a preview. It was meant to be one.

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Lakme Fashion Week started today. I’m supposed to be at the venue. Instead, I’m sitting in my room and staring at this curtain.

Nidhi Jacob|Art of the Trench

“I bought my first trench coat only last year in November. Have worn it about 5 times since I got it. The only thing that makes me happy about it is that it’s XXL so it’s quite comfy.

I bought the trench primarily for Delhi winters. I think it would feel pretty ridiculous to wear a trench in Bombay. Could wear it during the rains but I’m not sure if mine is waterproof. I do have a raincoat that could be trench-y.

I’m more of a sweater girl, really.”
-Nidhi Jacob. Deputy Fashion Editor, Marie Claire.

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I also made a series of short films with Nidhi in October. These are screen shots from one of the films.

It’s almost ready. And will be up soon.

Art of the Trench.

Indu. Karan’s Grandmother.

“I found this photo in a shoe box when I was looking for some pictures to be framed on my family wall. It was a beige trench & the photo is about 60 years old.

My grandmother got married at 20 and she got this coat made sometime then. The fabric was for 150Rs. and the stitching cost her about 40Rs. She would wear it with her saris and suits. When she’d wear this out in Bombay, people would call her Rani of Punjab…because, at that time, no one else would wear a trench. People considered it as something royal and international.

The photo was taken in Sonipat, Haryana.“
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Karan Berry. Shoe designer at a.k.a. bespoke

“I have 2 trench coats. A trench coat for me is like a shield. It’s an interesting piece of garment which not only protects but also is a style statement. It carries the identity of the wearer.”
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I photographed Karan in October for Burberry’s Art of the Trench project. Rest of the photos(about 50) are up on the AoTT site (takes a while to load; click on “view latest”). Photos were only meant to go online but now they’re part of an exhibition.

Below is a short video of Christopher Bailey talking about the project and my involvement with it.

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Priya Kishore, Bombay Electric. 

The exhibition is on from 3rd-12th Feb at Burberry store, Oberoi, Gurgaon. See you all there.

Men’s Fashion in Small Towns|Preview

Sometime in July, I was contacted by the people at Future Brands for documenting street fashion in a bunch of small towns in India. The project was for one of their clients, Madura Garments-one of the biggest apparel retail companies in India.

My brief was to document fashion in these towns as I’d previously done in Jodhpur & Shillong…with the focus being on men’s fashion. My end task was to provide insights via photographs that’d probably help them understand the ‘underlying ethos of dominant aesthetic preferences’ in contemporary India, and maybe help find answers to questions like: How certain fashions develop in small towns? What affects the general style of dressing? Why people wear what they wear…?.& so on…

I would be making posts on all these towns individually a little later. So this is just a preview.

I’ve also done a long story(3000+ words-before getting edited) for HT Brunch-a quarterly magazine..that comes out sometime in October. The story mostly covers trends I noticed in these small towns, analogies that I draw between street fashion & urban fashion(similar to this and this), and things I experienced while being on the road…

Aurangabad. Here, I was detained by cops for two hours for taking photos inside the high court premises. And this other time I was followed by two drunk men who wanted money & my camera.
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Asansol. The only people I found interesting here were the rickshaw-walas and the day-labourers(actually this was the case pretty much in all towns).
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Salem. Salem was the cleanest of all these places, surrounded by hills(and a small hill station-Yercaud), and the only place I wouldn’t mind going back to.

Rest other towns were not appealing at all & there was nothing much to do. That also made me a little sad. I would often think about the kind of lives kids here live and couldn’t help but compare it to mine in the city. All the things I can do and have access to, while people here don’t….even if it is as trivial as deciding which wifi enabled coffee shop to sit at. That may not be a great example but in a big city one has many options and choices- where to go; where to eat; where to shop; where to hang out…while in small towns it’s always this one average looking place where everything seems slow and everybody looks disconnected. I’m sure the town has its own reasons to be like that…

In Salem, it also seemed like there were no young people in the age group of 15-25. Someone said, “Most youngsters go to the big cities to study and when they come back for the weekend, they stay inside their homes. Once they’re finished with college they get jobs outside+there is nothing really to do here for anybody to stick around for long..except for the old people.”

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Bareilly. I got mobbed here.
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So I took about 2000+ photos..& mostly ended up photographing the poor working class people on the streets as slightly-urban, middle-class fashion was not interesting at all(I did document it for the sake of documenting). Another thing common in all these places was the crowds in the markets. It seemed like no matter what, people just never stop shopping. I find that slightly crazy.
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My travel screenshop looked like a mini-India in itself. This is via google-maps..right in the beginning when I was calculating and figuring out the trip.

The trip was about 20 days long with me spending about 3-4 days in each town – involved 6 flights(two I missed). a few train rides, many cab rides, and a lot of walking in the July sun. All these small towns were about 200 kms. away from the big cities. So it was always plane to the big city and a train/cab to the small city.

Each time I flew, I took a window seat just so I could marvel at the crapulous civilization from above, admire the shapes clouds made..stare at the horizon that stretched to eternities..think about how amazing it is for planes to fly in an open space with no physical barriers and go from one exact land point to the other..picture intestines…and lot of other trivial stuff..

Hazy earth is obviously Bombay. Blue-green is Delhi. Intestine is somewhere in West bengal.
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One day I’d like my pre-travel map to look like this. A giant steak.

Street Style India for Wallpaper*

In June, Wallpaper* did an India based issue – a part of their four year project; this being the third in its series to produce portraits of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) nations. In 2009, they were Made in China, last year they were Born in Brazil and this year they are Reborn in India.

During the same month I was one of the guest editors for Wallpaper* online. Below are some used/unused photos from the street style story I was commissioned to do+some extra info+some old photos. See the entire series here.

That’s a seahorse on Aki’s hand. “Seahorse is the only species where males carry the babies; it doesn’t have any feet..so it doesn’t rest on the ground..is full of zest, zeal, and bounce,” and wikipedia adds they’re promiscuous, flighty, and more than a little bit gay…Nevertheless, seahorses are fascinating- watch one giving birth to babies...

Anand Tukaram is a 73 year old fisherman..stays in Versova village. When not fishing, he says, he and few of his friends just sit under a tree for long hours, and talk about life and politics.

Dheeman Agarwala is(was) currently reading Kerouac’s Lonesome Traveller & just got himself a cook.

Munish Sharma, 25. 
Munish used to be a theatre actor but then he gave up acting..now he works as a casting director & occasionally makes films. He likes the idea of nothingness & Old Monk rum; loves Zoolander & Warhol’s eccentricity; finds inspiration in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell; likes sunshine, drinking beer in the afternoons, & listening to Venus in Furs on loop…dislikes television, marathi language…and does not approve of circles.

“I like playing when people are around but they don’t necessarily have to be or act like an audience…”
Suhas can be found playing the flute at his regular spot under a tree at Prithvi Theatre…though only in the evenings.

Elton is currently traveling all over the country shooting for a Bollywood film starring Amy Jackson and Prateik Babbar. Film is called Prem Katha(Love Story).

Marv D’souza, 25. Fashion Stylist. Marv can fix anything..from buttons to broken hearts. He grew up in Santa Cruz & spent most of his childhood looking at the sky & sketching…studied mass media & majored in journalism. His first job was at 15; he did promotions and demos for a microwave company & made 4000 Rs. a month working 3 days a week. He likes Florence + The Machine, strawberries in Nutella, & street shopping. He can sing at the drop of a hat…dislikes countdowns, gossip mongers, Lady Gaga, and malls.

Jagvir has a blog here where he shares meticulously put together inspiration boards. Although it’d be nicer to see is what they eventually transform in to…but maybe, sometimes, the end product is not so important.

Neville Bhandara, 22. Aspiring novelist. Currently in journalism. Feet firmly on the ground, head makes trips to the moon and back. Believes in new ideas and intentions, ideological-revolution, people power…change, change, and change. Likes smell of old books and new books. Loves T.S. Eliot, sushi, and Sartre. Dislikes processed cheese, crocodiles, corn, tiny teacups, and needles. His most over used phrase is “don’t be shy.”

Karan has finally started his label-a.k.a. bespoke -along with best friends Ateev & Aeiman(this is old news). They make shoes & bags. You can find Ateev blogging about their inspirations & other stuff here on shodstories.

Syed Ali Arif is an artist. He grew up in Hyderabad..& now lives in Bombay. He loves Sridevi, Hyderabadi Biryani, Vienna, and Gustav Klimt. Check his work here.

This June issue had three covers: One with The Girl Who Jumped, one with Subodh Gupta & Bharti Kher, and third one with a turbaned man. Anybody knows who he is?(update:Manu Bohra) Read story behind the headline font here + a few other stories here.

Dressed as a nawab and his begum, Gupta and Kher posed specially for this limited edition cover. The photograph titled, In Another Life, was taken by a photographer friend and the artists have a personal joke about their outfits. “We were asked to wear something quintessentially Indian,” says Gupta.

The idea of distilling an identity as complex as being Indian seemed a bit hilarious to begin with, which is why the couple decided to play the dressing game to the hilt. In a photo-moment that appears surreal but plausible, they decided to wear vintage royal robes against a painted backdrop in Hyderabad while visiting the Charminar Palace. Gupta has on a red Fez and a sherwani offset with pearls, while Kher offers the right complement with vintage bling in a highly ornate red gota-covered skirt. Kher says she loved her garment. “It’s a half-skirt that I put over my jeans and the whole outfit can be worn over your existing clothes,” she chuckles. “Of course, it is a tongue-in-cheek photograph,” she adds.
via Indian Express

..his buttoned-up shirt and red turban reminds me of this man I photographed in Jodhpur. Background in the photo above is the Bandra to Worli in 7 minutes link road in Bombay.

Neha, 20. Architecture student. We briefly talked about temples in Dharamsala & houses in Auroville..she was planning to visit these places…but that was a year ago.

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Snehal Fernandez, 18…likes Maggi, pancakes, and Keane.

Ruchika Sachdeva, 24. Fashion Designer.
I met Ruchika again in February at her workshop in Hauz Khas Village… She had just bought some store space close to her workshop+was working on her summer collection + thinking a name for her label. The store was supposed to be more like a studio with a retail section..+ a creative space for exhibiting her own stuff and other visual artists’. There were also some floating ideas about making it a cafe and selling sandwiches.
I’m hoping the store is open now…or is about to..

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In her words- “I want to develop a niche in providing well tailored trousers, shirts, blazers and similar stuff. I feel that it’s difficult to find good tailored clothing for women in the Indian market and I want to be able to fill this gap. This season, I am doing a lot of panelling, experimenting with a bit of colour, and hopefully will be able to create something interesting..”

Her label is called Bodice and she is going to be showcasing her winter collection at Lakme Fashion Week this August.

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In the photo she’s wearing a white Zara shirt, a vintage tailored blazer, Topshop jeans, All Saints shoes and carrying a Nappa Dori Bag.

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Nappa Dori is Gautam’s brainchild..read more here. His shop is right there in HKV. When I met him, he was planning to open a store in Bombay and was location hunting…+ the cafe idea was his.

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Imsu. Business student/Fashion blogger. I talked about Imsu here before. This set is 2nd in documenting closets series. In the photo she’s wearing a thrifted sweater & cap, ASOS stockings, ASOS skirt, & Ebay wedges.

Photographed in Outram Line, North Delhi in February.

Sasha Laloo, 26…is from Shillong. She is wearing a seconds coat from Iewduh; linen dress from Iewduh; self-made belt; bag from Berlin; socks from some trade fair; necklaces: traditional Khasi+ other few from Morjim Beach, Goa.

Girls of Summer. Photographed near Prithvi theatre at Juhu, Bombay.

Christina Hanghal is a 25 year old fashion stylist…will do anything to find the right window curtains. She shares her birthday with Dior and loves Galliano. Her first paid job was a month long housekeeping stint at home with her 4 sisters; she was about 10. She studied fashion design at NIFT Bangalore…was 3 years junior to me.

Photo taken near St. Andrews Church in Bandra, Bombay.

Kismet is wearing Kurta from Fab India, shoes from Zara, and carrying a vintage mille-fleurs(?) bag with Petit Point embroidery work.

Nidhi Sunil, 24. Fashion Model. Nidhi loves cats. And last night she finished a whole box of doughnuts.

Nidhi is wearing boyfriend’s Levi’s shirt, Lee shorts, Aldo stockings, & shoes from Hill Road.

I’ve been on the road for about 15 days now..shooting street fashion in a few small towns in India. More on this project soon. Last four photos are from Bareilly(my last stop), which is where I am right now. I kind of got mobbed yesterday. 

“…the most eye-popping, synapse-snapping, pulse-pushing place on the planet. “
- Wallpaper* on India

Commissioned work for Blonde+Featured!

Blonde is a Germany based fashion magazine..available in Germany, Austria, & Switzerland. You can read all good things about it here on the fashion spot, and a bit about its last issue on Les Mads.

My runway photos from Lakme Fashion Week are part of an article-Indian Summer-in Blonde’s July issue. The article talks about 5 Indian fashion designers and their 2011 Spring/Summer collections. Designers are Little Shilpa, Shivan&Narresh, Sabyasachi, Masaba Gupta, & Manish Arora. Text is by Anna Baur with some insights & inputs by me.

Below are the print-screens; my copy is on its way. Download the legible /hi-res pdf here. It’s in German. Kannst du Deutsch lesen? Ich kann. Ein wenig.

On the cover is Caroline West | Elite NY.

“Together with Manou from “wearabout”, India’s number one style blogger, we ventured into the colorful, vivid and diverse fashion-scene of the mega-city Mumbai to find countries five most exciting designers.”

Above: Shivan & Narresh. Below: Little Shilpa(left). Sabyasachi(right).

Below: Masaba Gupta (left). Manish Arora SS 11 Paris(right) 

+ I’m featured in the magazine. Thank you Anna.

This is what the text on my page roughly translates to.
“What Scott Schuman a.k.a The Sartorialist is for New York..Manou of Wearabout is for Mumbai. The 27-year-old photographer and style blogger wanders with his camera through the 18-million-inhabitant city, always on the below-surface, chasing after good combination outfits; worn by models, homeless, working class, business people, trendsetters, students… ”. The style does not necessarily have to be in fashion, it must be aesthetically appealing..” in response to the question of what manou particularly values in Indian fashion. He further tells us: ”The interesting thing is that every state in India has different culture, language, tradition, and also a different clothing style. Therefore, it is here, everywhere, a wide range of different styles and combinations are born.” The results of his tour grazing can be found on wearabout.wordpress.com. Manou has photographed the most interesting collections at Lakme Fashion Week 2011 for Blonde and has given small useful insights on the big fashion scene in India.”