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.

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.

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.”

Men of Bombay & few other things

I spent last 20 days documenting men’s fashion on the streets of Bombay. Most of the photos in this series are exclusively for Bungalow 8. Read more about this here, here, and here.

The main course, later tonight, is the launch of men’s wear by Bungalow 8 & Pero + footwear by a.k.a. | along with the presentation of my street photos as a side dish on the walls.

Photos below are from the main course: Bungalow 8 | Pero | a.k.a. bespoke. 

Event starts at around 7 p.m. Everyone is invited.

Louise Lavabre | FCUK

Louise is a photojournalist and a writer. (check her recently updated travel blog here). She turned 24 on the 1st of this December and spent half of her birthday on the plane way back to France. Thinks birthday are only cool if you are a kid with lots of friends and doesn’t like them anymore.

Childhood
I grew up in the suburbs of Paris in a city called St Leu la Forêt(which literally means Saint wolf of the forest implying there were once wolves in Europe..next to Paris)..half an hour away by train from the capital city. My city was small, only 15 000 inhabitants, and was quite ugly, but I liked it. I had my friends there. We would go to the high school or next town by bikes and local buses, have house parties, smoke weed in the forest near my house (we even built a really cool cabin and would make fire there). I am the eldest child of a 4 girls family, so my childhood was also really centered around family. I remember arguing with my sister about her or me “stealing friends” or my make up, or even my place as the first kid since she looked older and taller than me. But all in all, we got along really well.
As a teenager I started getting bored of hanging around, doing the same old things, seeing the same old faces just a bit grayed by new beard, being both part and subject of all that countryside like gossip, I moved to Paris at 17 after finishing my high school degree.

What did you study after moving to Paris and what do you do now?
I studied Political Science : Philosophy, Economics, History, and Law mainly. In France, my university is a pretty good way to enter the media…and that’s what I wanted.
Now? I don’t know. I am trying to do many things, but you know, we say you tend to lose yourself trying to do too many things. So I..I travel a lot. I take photographs as much as I can. I care a lot about my relationships, with friends, family, love…I try to keep some time to write or talk or see those I love. Ahhh interviews always make you look stupid!

What excites & inspires you in life?
I guess answer to this is in my last answer. I try to do what inspires me I suppose. So traveling for sure, meeting people. Images more than sound (probably why I chose photos over recording). Reading. Well I guess all those are forms of traveling, experiencing the unknown, breaking the frontiers of what your life consists of, meeting something new and different. So it can be a physical travel, or it can be through a movie, a book, an incredible person you spent 24 hours with… many things.

Countries you have travelled to?
I have seen a lot of Asia. Well, this is not quite true. To be exact I went to a lot of Asian countries, but this doesn’t mean I have seen that much of them. Younger..I used to be this kind of a backpacker who was more thrilled by the simple idea of being on the road no matter where but now it is about actually seeing and feeling a place which requires time. And younger I had no time. Just wanted to see a lot and tell about it. So all in all, I have been to China, Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, India, Morocco, Egypt, Israel, Ghana, Kenya. All around Europe obviously since that’s where I come from. Canada and the US.

Why do you feel the need to travel?
The experience of traveling is linked to many things : the person you travel with (a friend, several friends, family, a lover, or simply yourself), the time you spend there, the season you are there (as depending on the season locals have a different approach to tourists), the landscapes, the culture, the hospitality of people…and those elements will count more or less according to the country you are in. A travel is an equation. Sometimes this equation is perfect. But now as I am thinking about it, all my travels have been perfect because the equation has always been surprising. A travel never looks like what you expected from it. Contrary to a party or studies, not fitting your expectations is never synonymous with disappointment.
I think I always feel the need to travel more because the more I travel the harder it is to impress my traveler’s eyes. As I said earlier, younger I wanted to see, now, and I know this sounds a little pretentious, I want to feel and document.

Traveling preferences and places you’d like to go to…
I prefer traveling to mountains rather than sea. First because I think the sea kinda looks the same everywhere. Then also because I think mountain landscapes & climate are more rough, more intense than a sea-side and that makes the living conditions there more rough…which I find interesting. And photographically, again, mountains are more fascinating. The light, the colours, the faces, the clothes, the fact that you don’t know what lies beyond the next curve….
I really want to go to Iran, Afghanistan and Ladakh. I loved middle-east. I loved Asia. I am very curious to see the countries in between.

What places did you visit in India and what did you like the most?
Well the initial plan was to go to Ladakh and trek in the Himalayas. But everybody (you too!) told me it was absolutely not the season ’cause of the early winter and the blocked roads so I flew to Trivandrum and came to Bombay via Kerala and Goa. I really liked Munnar(faces of the people seemed so different), Fort Kochi, Panajim (up in the town the atmosphere is totally different) and Mumbai!!
As a general concern, I really liked women. There’s something I noticed over my travels..there is a strange and beautiful complicity between the women of the world. As if we were sharing a secret. I love to have this confirmation each time I enter a bus, a train station, a market, or while strolling on the streets of a city.

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Below, Louise is in her favorite shirt…Got Milk?

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The post-it on the wall reads “forstarkare. kontakt. uttag” which means “amplifier. contact. sockets.” I’ve been trying to learn Swedish for a year.

Priya Kishore

Priya Kishore, owner of Bombay Electric, was on The Sartorialist in 2008, and was on the list of India’s best dressed people compiled by Verve in 2009.

Read more about Bombay Electric: short stories on styledotcom & cnngo, and a long story on stylebible dot ph.

Thank you for tripping

It’s the shoes and not the alcohol..right?

Allia was seen tripping on Burberry shoes here..while the finale model at a Burberry show went a step further. So maybe, it’s the shoes.

Allia,26. Fashion stylist.
Dress – Diane Von Furstenberg
Shoes – Jimmy Choo
Bag – M Missoni

Update: Allia says she doesn’t drink alcohol.

Shoes they make these days!