One week later, Manish Malhotra focused on the parable of bridal veils of the most personal kind in Nooraniyat, the opening show for the virtual avatar of India Couture Week (ICW). Like a viewer gatecrashing a private party of brides-in-waiting, Malhotra’s heroines were decked in supersized lehenga skirts embroidered with zardozi, badla and sequins that enveloped their body in swirls of fabric, making us recall the Victorian crinoline skirts worn by erstwhile ladies to create social distancing. The film scored in its attitude toward diversity where models of different ages, shapes and ethnicity appeared cavorting the “luminescent dream”. 
Significantly, the ICW shows this season seemed less tone-deaf to issues of gender inclusion and diversity. This is good news.

Mona Bhujel for Gaurav Gupta

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Gaurav Gupta (GG in fashion circles) believes in trickle-up, egalitarian fashion. While most designers ticked the diversity boxes this time, Gupta walked the walk a year ago, casting a wide net across age, colour, size, identity and sexual preference. His appetite for limitless perspectives allows him to push form and fabric to nervous-breakdown extremes. Case in point: the hybrid lehenga-gowns and saree-gowns he does, but also the off-shoulder nude gown with killer brims of metallic cording interjected with swoops of sheer fabric. This season, the silhouette was linear with slithering trails—a respite from vertiginous shaadi-wala lehenga looks of the week—and the palette was a sharp blend of nude, blue and burgundy with a splash of gold and metallic.

Sonam Kapoor Ahuja for Kunal Rawal

Kunal Rawal, too, highlighted diversity across its many definitions with a cast of boys-to-men models, and Ms Sonam Kapoor Ahuja. The actor wore a textured embroidered bandhgala with dhoti trousers, taking the idea of the boyfriend shirt and jeans to a whole different level. Vision Quest unpacked and explored a wardrobe of 55 looks; some new, some constructed from the brand archives; how about a compact edit, please? Rawal imagined his men in an urban-rockstar meld of French-knot textures, kurta-kaftan combos, bandi jackets and on-point patchwork sherwanis crafted from fabric castoffs, all interspersed with classic tailoring.

Sony Kaur for Anamika Khanna

And there was Anamika Khanna’s film; a snub of sorts to couture’s great expectations of not just who gets access to the elite club, but what constitutes totems of elite objects. “This collection is an emotion, a way of rejoicing beauty. It is an acceptance of what is, and a celebration of what we are given,” Khanna said in her press note. She saw beauty in places where others weren’t looking. Here, models turned trapeze artists, jumping—not parading—on a bed of flowers, literally, showing us how a lehenga or a saree can become a mutating expression of the ebb and flow of life; some hybrid second-skin of the country’s intricate crafts and art and ingenuity, and also avant-garde. After all, levity is just the cushioning antidote we need.

Although couture week (featuring 19 brands) celebrated diversity, the veil stayed more or less constant, floor-sweeping seductive in nature. Sure, bridal couture sells itself as “the dream”. But are today’s heterosexual women’s dreams about being swept off in a “designer ghunghat” by a hunk? 

Priyanka Kumari for Tarun Tahiliani

At least Tarun Tahiliani paid attention to subverting clichéd styling tricks that separate the vanguard from the old guard. Case in point: His first Bridal look, modelled by Priyanka Kumari, was a co-ord set of bustier and slim trousers veiled beneath a 16-kali jacket encrusted in kasab (variation of zari embroidery) and sequins, and a matching parasol. Next, he showed how a simple mundalaya (forehead ornament worn by bride and groom) can turn into a dreamy headpiece. “What is couture in India?” Tahiliani asked and answered in a short clip before the Artisanal Couture film: “We’ve always had handmade, tailormade, specifically measured, we are used to couture, we love it, we are entitled to it, and it fuels the wonderful craftsmen across the country who give us these amazing techniques to work with. And this couture week is a celebration of new ideas, lightness and great finesse.”

Shonali Sharma for Tarun Tahiliani

The veil means many things. Wearing one on the wedding day is historically connected to superstitions about warding off evil, while also representing specific faiths and family traditions. At other times, it’s seen as an (outdated) reference to the virginal bride. We argue that a piece of head cover already bloated with expectations could surely do without designers’ meddling too.

Rashmi Mann For Amit Aggarwal

So it’s heartening to report that Amit Aggarwal’s collection of 35 styles and silhouettes piquing optical illusions of the veil looked agreeably fresh and unforced. He wrapped his outfits in cascading layers of gradient veiling over 3D-hand embroidery and painterly marbling patterns, creating a fantasy that was also empowering. Metanoia was a wonder of craft and a thing of beauty imagined from alternative eco-friendly materials like glass fibre and raffia palm, discarded PVC and green polymer. That’s modern Indian couture for you.