Vaishali S discovered the art of cording and made it the star of her couture designs.
In conversation with News18, fashion designer Vaishali Shadangule speaks about creating couture with leftovers, showcasing at fashion weeks in India and creating a collection that expresses her love for nature.
Inspired by nature and bringing art to life in her silhouettes, Vaishali Shadangule’s creative narrative has been globally celebrated and how! After showcasing at Paris Fashion Week for three consecutive years, the champion of sustainability showcased at the recently concluded Lakme Fashion Week X FDCI in Mumbai.
In conversation with News18, fashion designer Vaishali Shadangule speaks about creating couture with leftovers, showcasing at fashion weeks in India and creating a collection that expresses her love for nature.
Excerpts from the interview:
After showcasing at Paris Fashion Week for 3 consecutive years, how does it feel to present your collection in India?
It feels like finally being back home! For sure after such experiences, you feel very different and target different leverages of fine-tuning. To say that I am now very different from before my experiences there. So I now come back with a more complex task where I have to meet the Indian audience’s expectations, while I keep going on my personal development that has to match my now international path.
Cording is synonymous with Vaishali S, what moment in time was that when you decided that this technique will be the main star of your label?
It was actually not a decision, but rather a discovery and now a base structure of it. I was striving on two different fronts. Firstly, I have always brought the village life values of sustainability and zero waste, for which discovering cording allowed me to take care of that aspect. Cording is done mainly by making use of leftovers. Secondly, I was looking for a way to give Indian flowy handloom fabrics a structure that could follow my creativity in silhouettes. Cording solved the same requirements at the same time and is really making me enjoy giving hand-woven fabrics extreme lines.
As a textile designer and creating collections that resonate with self-expression and art, how did you come to create Beneath? Tell us more about the collection.
When you are creating art, you are trying to give expression to feelings that you have inside, and that very often you are not capable of expressing through words. With Beneath I wanted to recreate the feelings that I felt in the moments of my life, the ones where I have been the most afraid, and that eventually became the important turning points. With a pictorial example of the time I decided to go for my diving course, without ever having swum in the sea.
Your showcase at Lakme Fashion Week X FDCI was a beautiful blend of art meets creatures of the ocean weaved into creative silhouettes. Tell us what makes this line special?
It is indeed a special line because it takes together my constant push to explore, in life and in fabrics, and my love for nature from which I take inspiration. All these garments remind me to always push forward and make me feel like in the middle of the ocean of nature.
The difference you noticed between international fashion weeks and Indian fashion weeks. Things you would like to change for the better here in India?
Difficult question, both are very different and address very different audiences, thus are “good” for that. Personally, I like being able to choose my location like I do abroad, it adds to the communication of the brand. At the same time, I love that all the rest is organised by the fashion week (lights, show directors, models pool, hair and make-up, etc.) as it becomes extremely hectic abroad.
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