Lakmé Fashion Week came to a close in Mumbai on Sunday evening with designer Gaurav Gupta staging an elegant grand finale with Bollywood’s Kareena Kapoor Khan as theshowstopper.
The actress wowed the crowd as she walked the ramp in a sleek black dress.
“I don’t think I have looked better in the last five, six years that I have walked the ramp than what Gaurav has done tonight,” said Kareena fter the show. “It complements me. When they told me that I’m going to walk for Gaurav Gupta, I was like, OK, fine. That means you’ll have to be in the best shape of your life because he sculpts you like a mannequin literally — and I think that’s what he’s done tonight to me.”
White, black and red were the main colours on the runway in fabrics including silks, Georgette and neoprene.
All models were females, wearing slim, structured designs, with ruffles being dominant on the ramp. The show revolved around a giant, imposing sculpture of a woman’s head on stage, complete with steps, which allowed the models to walk onto the centrepiece. The theme of the show was “sculpt”.
Gupta, who has been in the fashion industry for a decade, is known for his edgy, unconventional and contemporary cuts.
American singer Skylar Grey sported one of his designs when she performed at the Grammy Awards last year, and Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone frequently wears his creations. She wore one of them during last year's Dubai debut of Happy New Year, in which she starred with Shah Rukh Khan and Abhishek Bachchan.
“When I got the brief of ‘sculpt from Lakmé’, I felt it had a very natural fit,” said Gupta. “I’ve been doing sculptures since childhood, making things out of clay, and I have sculptures in my stores. I love shapes and forms. Being the finale, it has been exhausting but extremely exciting.”
Kareena said the designer was destined for the big time: “I think [Gupta] is meant for the bigger playground, which is Paris, Milan, Rome. Mumbai is a little small now.”
The show was held at Mehboob Studio, a film studio in Bandra in the suburbs of the city. But it did not achieve a celebrity turnout compared to some of the previous shows. Bollywood’s Aditi Rao Hydari, Prateik Babbar and Shriya Saran were spotted in the audience.
Irene Fernandes, the national features editor at Femina Wedding Times, part of The Times of India group, said she enjoyed the event.
“The structures and the silhouettes that he has used this time are so wearable — you can see yourself wearing it,” she said. “I think this year ruffles are really big and he’s capitalised on that. Every outfit, every colour was fabulous.”
She added that the staging of the shows at the fashion week were increasingly becoming more creative, with the use of a sculpture installation on stage, rather than having the models simply walk down a conventional ramp. Sasha Sharma, the editor-in-chief of Hoture, an online Indian fashion magazine, said she thought the show was "amazing".
“Gaurav Gupta always does something so creative,” she said. “It couldn’t get better than this. I love the colours he’s used. I think this season black, white and red are the colours of the season and those are the colours we saw. Very dramatic and amazing gowns.”
More than 100 designers unveiled their creations at Lakmé Fashion Week winter/festive 2015, including Manish Malhotra, Narendra Kumar, duo Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla and Tarun Tahiliani.
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