Abraham and thakore biography of george

Of course their clothes say as much as any words, as we see in the pictures throughout this article. It would be easy to look at David and Rakesh and see two Indian men in the Fashion industry, with the many associations, assumptions and stereotypes each of us carry with that tag, often unconsciously.

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But the reality is rather different, and goes back to their earliest roots. One part of appreciating their achievements today is to understand their diverse, international backgrounds. David Abraham was born in Singaporewhere his doctor father lived. Through his Chinese mother, he has plenty of Chinese relatives whom he still visits in Singapore and Malaysia.

Rakesh Thakore was brought up nearly 5, miles further East along the Equator, in Tanzania. Their paths first crossed at the National Institute for Design NID in Ahmedabad, where they spent five years learning their craft, and also building some lifelong friendships — including their own. After NID they went in different directions, but each still seeing the world through a more cosmopolitan, international lens than many of their contemporaries.

David Abraham started his career with an American buying house, where his designs were a hit with the American mass market. By designs in his own name were to be found in Park Avenue windows, priced appropriately for the setting. But despite the commercial success, the desire to decide their own direction was irresistible. The early days were not as glamorous as they might sound now, and the pair put in the hard work that any successful business demands.

This included travelling to London with suitcases of clothes, knocking on doors of buyers and letting the designs speak for themselves. They were joined by Kevin Nigli, who completed the 3 man abraham and thakore biography of george that has guided the brand to the upper echelons of the industry. But within 3 years they had stores in several big cities, and their clothes were available across the country.

From the outset, they showed a determination to do things they way they felt things should be done, regardless of conventional wisdom. One of the characteristics that comes through in virtually every description of the designers is the way they have shunned convention. There were only six in their Textile Design class, which was evaluated solely on project work.

One project required them to wander the city with cameras and take photographs. Another involved watching world cinema non-stop. And each student had their own loom, and had to weave every day. In other words, their initial education reinforced any pre-existing tendency to ignore rules and convention, and follow their own path. Fast-forward toand you find one another telling example of the Abraham and Thakore attitude to industry norms.

What made it notable was that after 18 years, it was their first ever show. In every collection we combine both elements of tailoring and stitched construction with unstitched, draped garments, creating clothing that while relevant to contemporary living also engages with the traditions of Indian clothing. They are illustrative of the role traditional Indian textile has played in the development of our design concepts and how we are inspired by its vocabulary—the particular techniques germane to each craft tradition.

We also borrow ideas and concepts from other sources when appropriate, and we also interpret different traditional dress languages by tweaking the vocabulary, by playing with proportions, and changing the context of specific elements. These are all living traditions and the fabrics are developed from the many different craft and textile centers spread across India.

This is the name given to a cotton fabric handwoven by the handloom weavers in and around the village of Mangalagiri in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. Images one, two, three and four show designs developed on the handlooms of the region. The fabric designs have simple contrast woven borders, referring to local desi gn conventions followed in sari and dhoti borders, used as graphic design elements in the garments.

The silhouettes are designed both for men and women in a mix of Indian and Western shapes. Ikat refers to the process of yarn resist dyeing and weaving practiced in many textile production centers around India. We have mostly developed simple geometric forms in order to exploit and draw attention to the blurred right angle geometry of ikat, in which the resist dyed warp and weft yarns intertwine.

Though the traditional language of pattern in Indian ikat is diverse, we have focused on the simpler geometric motifs to create designs that strongly express the precision of this exceptionally complex technique. Images five, six and seven show examples of our double ikat silk saris, woven in an enlarged houndstooth pattern in black, ivory and chartreuse.

This particular sari design was developed for a collection where we inquired into the conventions of menswear clothing and menswear fabrics. Some of these conventions were viewed as a source of inspiration for womenswear garments designed for the Indian market. The ensemble consists of a sari, a classic menswear-inspired shirt, and a belt.

This ensemble is now part of the permanent archives of the Victoria and Albert Museum, displayed in The Fabric of India exhibition in It is now travelling through the United States. Image eight shows the double ikat silk sari in black, ivory and red.

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Rather than patterning, this textile design uses the yarn resist technique to create solid geometric blocks of color. The fuzzy edges of each color block draw attention to the ikat technique. The sari is worn with a long sleeved choli made of industrial grade nylon, with sleeves in undyed khadi cotton. The four designs shown in images nine, ten, eleven and twelve use double ikat to explore simple geometric forms in a variety of fabrics used in garments and accessories.

Number five is handwoven silk, numbers six, seven and eight are handwoven cotton. The four designs shown in images beneath use double ikat to explore simple geometric forms in a variety of fabrics used in garments and accessories. Images thirteen, fourteen and fifteen depict complex jacquard-like fabrics of silk and gold wire woven in Benares in Uttar Pradesh using the jhala system, an indigenous version of the jacquard mechanism.

This sari with a non-repeat leopard skin pattern was woven in Benares on a tussar ground. The leopard skin motifs were brocaded in black silk and gold zari, then ornamented with mother of pearl sequins. The construction graph for the brocaded patterns for the five-and-a-half meter sari extended across the full length of the sari, as it was a non-repeat design.

Handloom weaving allows us to produce small multiples of a particular design, enabling us to change the design after weaving, say, four pieces, and then produce something new. Our intention with this collection was to explore the creative possibilities of non-repeat designs. For a brand like ours, which is aimed at the upper segment of the market, our ability to producing exclusive, limited edition products gives our labels a unique and intrinsically Indian kind of cachet.

The large scale check patterning developed for this collection Images sixteen and seventeen was also woven in brocade in Benares, and is based on the patterns made by the warp and weft threads as they overlap in different weave structures, such as twills and tabby. The brocades in images eighteen and nineteen display the complex patterning possible on the brocade loom.

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Also woven in Benares, the layout of the fabric consists of small checks, in each of which a different pattern is woven. Their third partner, Nigli, a graduate of the National Institute of Fashion Technology, joined six months later. That leap to London was due to a lucky turn of events. He was an incredibly generous man.

Abraham and thakore biography of george: Living the Radiant Life

She bought some of our pieces and we never looked back. One thing led to another. I have a friend, Sue Holtwho lives in London, she introduced us to the owner of Browns at the time a leading boutique store in London. The only strategy we had, which I really fought for right from the beginning, was that I refused to label our products under any other name.

These buyers were not used to Indian brands. So they would ask us to put The Conran Shop label, for instance. We were lucky. We were small. Handloom fabric from Phulia and Maheshwar, cotton Ikat from Andhra, woven by hand and cut in wearable, international styles. Both Abraham and Thakore are weavers themselves. We could do the minimum and these top shops preferred tiny quantities.

Creating small quantities is a characteristic inherent in the handloom industry. And to see it as problematic is a foolishness that shapes the perception and policy of the handloom industry in our country. For handloom to imitate machine work, or to aspire to create quantities that a powerloom can, is counterproductive to what handlooms have to offer: qualities better suited to the luxury, not mass market.

Abraham stresses on the possibility of still being able to do that in India. In no other country can a designer go and print or weave something as small as 10m of fabric. Nowhere else. Japan is impossible. Indonesia maybe, but their range of expertise is limited to Ikats and batiks. In London, nothing but a little bit of tweed maybe. Our affordable luxury wear is rooted in a fabric-first approach where homegrown, heirloom-worthy textiles are reimagined into everyday wear for modern-day Indians.

How challenging was it to nourish and grow the brand? We carefully crafted our collection that gave away that sense of luxury. When we started, it was a design brand by Indians for business overseas back inwhich lead to difficulty in building our brand visibility. However, later that also became our identity. We are strongly connected to our Indian roots.

We, along with our weavers and karigars, have always taken on the challenge to reinvent the wheel both in our designs and our fabrics. The double ikat silk houndstooth sari and shirt from our AW collection. Muga, Tussar and Eri are fabrics woven from wild silk, which was used to create the line. Our fabrics are printed with a variety of techniques like hand-screen block printing, and aari embroidery, to name a few.