The accidental fashion designer

There’s no escaping Nikhil Thampi these days. From magazine covers to parties and events of all kinds, it is the up-and-coming designer’s flamboyant dresses that the stars are choosing to be seen in. Under the circumstances, it is quite natural to expect a degree of highhandedness while talking to the designer — the affectation of being the flavour of the season, you see.

Oh, how wrong we were. “I’ll talk to you as long as I don’t get stopped by the cops for talking on the phone while driving,” quips Thampi setting the tone for a conversation that was unpretentious, candid and warm.

Taking it from the top we ask, who by the looks of it has made it big so quickly, if he has had to face a period of struggle, if at all? “Honestly, yes, I have undergone a lot of struggle but it’s been in a different context,” opens Thampi before divulging the details. “I haven’t studied fashion. I was a Psychology graduate and was working in the family business but being a creative person, I wasn’t exactly getting any creative satisfaction. Somewhere about that time, a good friend of mine who was a student of NIFT was showing at Lakmé Fashion Week and asked me to help her out, setting the stall etc.

Thereon, my interest in fashion kept growing and following continuous pestering from family and friends, I eventually decided to give this career a shot.” Of course what followed is the stuff of dreams. “I applied to take part in LFW 2011 under the Gen Next Designer category, and by good fortune I was one of the eight designers selected, out of all those 8,000 plus applications they receive,” he recalls.

Since that first showing, Thampi, as the adage goes, has never looked back but getting back to our initial question he says, “While making it in fashion may not have been difficult for me, given that I never studied fashion, the struggle comes in terms of getting the technical aspects right like knowing the different fabrics and their names, knowing the right terms for the cuts and techniques, understanding the printing process et aI.”

He might still be on a learning curve there but given that the NT label is becoming quite an ubiquitous presence in the glossies, we rush to ask him about the first moment he remembers seeing a celebrity wearing his creation and pat comes the reply, “The first moment that remains indelible is when I saw Anushka Sharma wear a gold dress by my label for the launch of a magazine. So, even though my designs had appeared on three covers by then and I knew I was doing a decent job, it was when she wore that dress that it struck me that I have arrived.”

Moving on, we ask Thampi, because he seems to be the right person to ask it, about the essential qualities designers need have to make it in Indian fashion. With some degree of candour Thampi expounds, “A problem I see today is of protégés of designers copying their mentor’s styles instead of creating their own signature style.

So, keeping that in mind, I’ll say if any designer wants to make a mark for himself or herself, they’ve got to have originality. I strongly believe in maintaining originality, in having stylistic independence, which is why you are never going to see a Nikhil Thampi trademark. I am going to design clothes of all styles and genres.” “Individuality,” Thampi points out, “is another quality pertinent quality every designer requires. You need to know who you are as a person, what your belief system is because your individuality reflects in your collection.”

Finally, we ask him the essential question of what he, as a gen next designer, wishes changed in the Indian fashion industry and he states, “This fixation on Indian clothes, like what we saw at Cannes, is not the only thing that Indian fashion is about. Yes, it is true that you can become an A-class couturier in the country by designing choli-lehenga ensembles but that frame of thought has to break. Let us not standardise Indian fashion. I think we need to experiment more,” signs off Thampi.

Notes from A/W ’13
“I will be showing at the Lakme Fashion Week in August,” reveals Thampi divulging a few more details of the collection. “In this collection I have experimented with elements of South Indian fashion.” Quiz him if one will see the mundu (Kerala-styled dhoti) on the ramp and all he adds in a conspiratorial tone is, “There’s no mundu. All I will say is it’s a very quirky and interesting take on South Indian fashion.”

Working on the red carpet look
Designing clothes for celebrities for the red carpet is a customized affair. Every celebrity wants to make a mark and as such, a common design from the collection wouldn’t do.

But first, you get into the picture when the celebrity decides she wants to wear you. And then, based on factors such as the theme of the event etc, I share my vision of what I think she should wear, or improvise on an existing design and we take it from there.