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Designer Tarun Tahiliani who boasts of a 2+ decade-long legacy in the industry launched his S/S’23 luxury prêt collection – Sheer Drama – at the Lakme Fashion Week, being hosted in collaboration with FDCI. This unique collection was presented on Day 3 of FDCI x Lakmé Fashion Week.

Tarun’s muse and showstopper for the collection was Shobita Dhulipala.

Tarun Tahiliani moved from the by-lanes of the Gateway of India to working in the by-lanes of the Qutub Minar, the victory tower marking serious Islamic rule in India, and with the environs, the natural synthesis of so many worlds, distilled into the structured drape, season after season, defines luxury pret.

The message and creativity were crystallised in the show, adding layers through music, projection, and words. No longer is the runway show a pretty presentation of clothes; the meaning and symbolism go far deeper.

Colours, texture, and structured draping combine with traditional embroidery redone, in non-traditional sprays, settings, and colours. This was a ready-to-wear show and the techniques and usage are kept contained, and accessible, but yet glamorous. Depth was created in monochrome, the drape is the fluid poetry around the body, and a new fusion is explored.

Inspired by the water motif in Tarun Tahiliani's Collection, pianist and composer, Sahil Vasudeva lent a modern cinematic piano soundtrack to the show, performing his own composition Qinara and Lighthouse - a reimagination of Philip Glass's works. Qinara, on the edge of a new breakthrough, or of a world left behind by evolution into new worlds and connected dreams—all that we were and more!

Tarun joined forces with Lakmé India, the country’s number one cosmetics brand, who will be bringing their recently launched Lakmé Absolute Lip Mousse and Lakmé 9-to-5 CC Light Mousse to the runway. The show was styled by international Fashion Stylist, Louw Kotze.

Inspired by the ever-flowing essence of water, the drape envelops, surrounds, fills and caresses the wearer — with each fold taking form intuitively and playing with the hemline of desire, without relying on surface embellishments. Tarun Tahiliani’s luxe prêt collection looks at ‘lightness’ through the lens of fashion. Presented in a beautiful colour palette, from neutrals, nudes, iridescent and pastels on faded metallic, the showcase celebrates fashion and beauty, and their role in every woman feeling #UnapologeticallyMÉ.

Speaking about the collection, Designer, Tarun Tahiliani, says, “the collection is all about the drape, which is rooted firmly in the Indian identity. As it evolves into a more global instrument of sculpting fashion narratives, I now try through the structured drape, to preserve our heritage on a more cerebral level. The Indian dialogue of drape, cultural identity, and predominantly, is a fine form developing over millennia. We are simplifying it for the contemporary context, without relying on surface ornamentation. Our spring/summer collection speaks to this modernity — traditional drape suspended in time.”

Marrying the lightness of these ranges with airy drapes and light textures, the spirit of this show as be an ethereal interpretation of the tagline ‘As light as air, as bold as you’. Paying tribute to the incredible legacy of our Indian craft heritage, this collection essays tradition in Tarun’s inimitable ‘India Modern’ style.  The luxury prêt collection has been conceptualised in a structured form to be ‘unapologetically me’ in a new spirit that is not ethnic or western but an evolution of who we are at this moment in time.

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