JOIN USGiving a twist to tradition
Coming from a family which has been into the sari business since four generations, it was a potential career option for designer Nitesh Sharaff who eventually joined the family business (a wholesale unit) on completing his studies. It was nine years ago when brothers Gaurav and Nitesh started ‘Studio AV’, as they wanted to take
the business one notch higher.
“I started my career with a garment factory which was run completely by me for two years. After that, I decided to join the family business. All my knowledge of fashion has come through practical learning,” says Nitesh.
Their latest collection is called ‘Dhaage’, inspired by the journey of mixing multicoloured threads to create the entire collection. It consists of two types of threadwork embroideries — the soft and subtle Parsi embroidery and the colourful threads in Madhubani embroidery (Madhubani paintings transformed into embroidery) with a little hint of ‘zardosi’ and ‘dabka’ work to add shine.
“We have used the Parsi embroidery to create fun and youthful Western garments and through the Madhubani embroidery line, we have tried to target young girls who are looking for something light-weight yet elegant, colourful and sophisticated,” adds Nitesh.
Ask him the purpose behind the collection and he says that with this collection, they want to revive the dying art of Madhubani through fashion and provide more recognition to it.
He adds that designers have done Madhubani in the form of print but no one has given it an embroidery form. “The forte of our collection is that the outfits look very heavy but when a person wears them, they are surprised by how light and comfortable they are. We mainly focus on Indian traditional wear; however, we have recently started with fusion wear too. We mostly work with handwoven fabrics like ‘malmal’, ‘muga’ and organza.”
The Parsi collection has a monochrome palette whereas for the Madhubani line, they have concentrated on bright colours like mustard, green, orange and blue.
Nitesh says that aspiring designers should focus on being original and never fear to experiment as that’s the key to attaining success in this field. The young designer says, “Every year, there are a lot of changes that one can see. With so many designers coming up, it is a challenge to make a mark in the market.
He adds, “It was never a smooth ride. Coming up with different ideas and designs every year without repeating anything is in itself the biggest challenge. We look forward to not outdoing other designers but to improving ourselves and doing better than before each time. We like coming up with a collection that is liked and appreciated by everybody,” says Nitesh.