Czarina of couture

Every season she has innovated new sari silhouettes — from the pajama sari, dhoti sari, churidar sari to coat sari. Anamika Khanna over the years has evolved an aesthetic which is simply her own.

Your new couture line is full of capes and is in a palette of ivory and midnight blue. Did anything specific inspire you?
Not just every season, every moment is about a new thought and that’s what makes all of us tick. What we have in India in terms of silhouette and textile heritage continues to inspire me. This time, the collection is about feeling free to mix, adapt, modernise and make the world my melting pot. Quiet references, quiet innovations but you see them.

Anamika Khanna is a self-taught name in design. Does not belonging to a mainstream design school learning helped you to be this successful?
Being self-taught has its advantages and disadvantages too. I have to admit, when I started out everyone and everything was not a designer. It gave me the window to experiment learn and study to a very large extent and develop my own aesthetic.

Experiences in international selling have also been a massive learning process. The journey is long still. Yes it has totally helped me carve out my own identity and liberate me from boundaries and influences.

Like Chanel has its core identity like quilted 2.55 bag, monochrome and tweed — what would be your iconography?
Icon? Let me become one, only need 100 years. Our brand has a distinct emotional identity — elegant, subtle, quiet, an identification with reinvention and above all a respect for craft, heritage and textile. These things won’t change.

How much contribution does a designer make in styling a major red carpet which is dissected by fashion police across the board?
I think a designer along with a stylist as well as the muse — all of it makes a difference.
The personality, the vision, the garment, the make-up, hair and accessories all of them go together to make or break. For Cannes I worked with the super strong stylist Rhea Kapoor and of course the muse Sonam, who had the courage  and the elegance to pull it off and not make it look rural.

Kolkata chromosome has evolved and every third designer from the city is playing with the patch work technique.

I hope this is not the Kolkata chromosome. Yes with every third person being a designer, craftsmen easily available floating around with copied samples, what can you expect more than cut and paste. It’s a sad way to go.

How challenging is it for you to retain your signature look yet reinvent?
We thrive on challenges, we get bored fast. We have courage and we are true to our souls in design so the rest comes easy.

Why did you choose to go the couture way for the past couple of years?
Anamika Khanna prêt has not vanished. It very much exists, though we were taking our time in finding the right balance and prices. It’s just that we haven’t been showing prêt at fashion weeks. The pressure on us for our main line has been immense too.

Every designer evolves and creates an identity and newbies just acquire it like heritage.

What do you think about new names like Nupur Kanoi who have a similar aesthetics?
It is a slightly worrying situation here. It’s okay to have similar aesthetics, but downright copying is what rattles me and managing to get away with it. However, this doesn’t last though.