Ace designer Suneet Varma is planning to open India’s first ever fashion archive that will help fashion students in India to look through how the country evolved and matured with time.
The designer, who currently has archival material of 25 years of his own work, wants to also store other designers’ works.
Suneet says he is looking for someone or even a company to come on board and spearhead the project as he will then look at approaching other designer friends and colleagues to come forward and share their works, styles and signatures of the past for the fashion archive.
An excited Suneet says, “This initiative will be purely for academic purposes. I have studied and have also taught budding designers at many fashion institutes in India but I have to say that our country has been very bad in saving our fashion history.
In every top fashion college in the world, say Central Saint Martins or Pearl or Parsons, there is an archive where students get to see the works of Galliano to Gucci over the ages. They at least have an archive of 50 years of fashion which is beneficial for the students.”
Suneet, who is showcasing his line inspired by the works of acclaimed illustrator Antonio Lopez at the Delhi Couture Week, laments, “I have seen some designers don’t even have pictures of their last collection.
Maybe we are not so serious about fashion yet. Maybe we are only looking at it for commerce and not cultural history as the things that have happened in India have influenced fashion much like movies and even art.
We must store it for the generations to see and learn from.”
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