Visibility, branding very important in the current scenario: Madhu Jain

By Nivedita

New Delhi, March 8 (IANS) Ace designer and textile revivalist Madhu Jain, who is celebrating 30 years in the fashion industry this month, is set to make her first ever fashion week debut with her show at the forthcoming Amazon India Fashion Week (AIFW) Autumn/Winter 2017. She feels visibility and branding is becoming very important in the current scenario.

So what took her so long to showcase her designs at any fashion week?

The designer told IANS: "I have been concentrating on doing textile installations with a ramp show or two thrown in. The last show was in Paris in autumn 2016, for the French European India Fashion Week as part of the Namaste France cultural festival.

"I saw that as the perfect platform to share India's rich crafts tradition with an engaged global audience. I have also been indulging in my love for research and development by working on perfecting a new textile that i hope to unveil to the world soon. Watch out for it."

How important is it for designers to be regular at fashion weeks in the current time?

"Today, there are so many platforms for showcasing one's work. From ramp show to the online world. Designers choose to switch between medium to reach out as effectively as possible to their buyers. Visibility and branding is becoming very important in the current scenario. The person behind the product is important," she said.

Known in the fashion circuits as a craft revivalist and textile conservationist, Jain promotes indigenous forms of textile weaving and designs. Her show at the upcoming fashion gala -- be held from March 15-18 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium -- will a step towards the same.

"The selections I've made for the AIFW ramp show are an extremely exclusive. I dug into my treasure chest of my very personal favourite outfits -- the masterpieces I've painstakingly developed over three decades. So, the show is very much a history of my work and represents all that the Madhu Jain label stands for: innovation in sustainable loom- based textiles and handwoven embroidery," she said.

The designer will also showcase some of her successes in revitalizing the handloom, natural fibres sectors.

"This includes, among others, the centuries-old Nakshi embroidery that was lost to India after Partition, and which I helped to revive in tandem with Bangladesh's largest NGO, BRAC. Another favourite of mine is the Uzbekistan Ikat that I was able to deftly translate into weaves with my master weavers in India," she said.

And her inspiration this time will again be heritage in the purest form.

"Heritage in its purest form is what I am about. My personal sensibility is highly respectful of India's unmatched handlooms tradition. And my life's mission has been to build on that, and to grow this sector by producing new weaves, that are contemporary but which retain the integrity of the original," she said.

Jain's forte lies in developing textiles in distinctive combinations of two different weaving traditions to create new textiles, high on quality and design.

(Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)

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