JOIN USMet Gala tuxedo by Indian designer turns heads
Fashion designer and environmentalist Runa Ray created a sustainable look for fashion expert Steven Kolb for this year’s Met Gala, a fundraising event that concluded recently. The design was simple yet suave and impressed many.
The designer talks to DH on Saturday about the piece and what inspired it.
The tuxedo that Kolb, president and CEO of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), wore had 7,000 crystals embedded in them. The front, back and sleeves of the jacket had the chapter ‘Giving’ from the book ‘Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran on it. “It was Kolb’s favourite book, and according to him, the gala is about giving, so everything fell in place together. When discussing the idea, I told him that he would be ‘laden with a message’. The concept was simple because sight is but a choice for many. People would notice the embellishment but not understand its deeper meaning,” she says.
Runa, who has worked with the Braille script using Swarovski crystals in the past in her New York Fashion Week 2015 collection, decided to revive the design and integrate it into Kolb’s 10-year-old jacket. “Sustainability is all about reuse, and since we have so many clothes, I asked Steven to give me one of his old tuxedos to work with. The jacket was in great condition,” she says.
What was the crystal design inspired by? Runa elaborates, “The choice of Braille was my reliance on the comprehension of codes embedded in humanity — several messages and tongues, reminiscent of the tower of Babel, sometimes creating disqualifying metaphors, sometimes preserved into a language worthy of our human race. This social experiment laden with meaning aims to delve into the profundity of fashion to mingle amongst many but remain one of the few to be obscured yet stated, opulent and humble.”
Tedious process
Runa is intrigued by alternative languages which engage the other sense. She finds Braille fascinating because it is the language of the visually-impaired.
Runa traced the script using a micro tip pencil over the jacket, after which the crystals were stuck. “There were lots of calculations that went into aligning the crystals and almost 50 hours were spent in sticking each crystal. More than 20 hours went into creating the Braille font, tracing it on paper and then transferring it onto the garment,” she says.
The design fell in place with the theme for this year, which was ‘Gilded Glamour’. “We did not discuss the theme and I had no clue what it was,” she says.
Runa, who is lead mentor for the CFDA and Swarovski’s Regeneration Scholar Award 2021, teaches sustainable practices.
“If one has to repurpose a garment, it can be done in several ways — there are no hard and fast rules. It depends purely on the concept, the creative idea and the personality of the client,” she says.
Other sustainable Met Gala looks this year
Met Gala 2022 saw celebrities like Kim Kardashian wear Marlyn Monroe’s dress (in which she sang ‘Happy birthday Mr President’ for John F Kennedy’s birthday). Billie Eilish wore upcycled fabrics from Gucci and Emma Stone rewore her wedding after-party dress.