A designer & a gentleman

The Page-3 shy Soumitra Mandal ensures his artisans and weavers get a fair deal

For a designer who’s had eight well-received shows at the Lakme India Fashion Week, Soumitra Mandal is an unusually reticent and retiring man. No Page 3 parties, a family man, a small-town childhood. Very un-designer, if you will. In fact, he doesn’t even like being called a designer. “I’m a developer,” he says, with a quiet firmness.

Mandal started his career in design in 1998, training under a senior fashion designer for five years. He launched his own label Marg in 2002 and started supplying his products to Taj Khazana, the souvenir store of the Taj Group. “It was around this time that I realised the potential of Indian fabrics in the foreign market and started experimenting with handloom fabrics, such as taant, tangail and matka silk, and modern designs,” says Mandal. His use of vibrant colours, he says, is to reach out to young buyers.

Today, he supplies to well-known retail brands like Fab India and Aditya Birla group’s Linen Club.

Mandal sources his raw materials from the weavers of Shantipur in Nadia district, Murshidabad, and Midnapur districts of Bengal. “Bengal is a treasure trove of rich fabrics and master weavers who have been practising the skill for generations. But the lack of variety in designs and patterns have plagued the once-thriving textile industry,” Mandal explains. He has toured extensively in remote corners of the state in search of fabric and artisans and commissioned them to work for his label.

Moreover, Mandal intends to work for the development of Indian handloom industry with a unique ‘save the weavers’ foundation to ensure a sustained income for them so they can concentrate on the application on modern techniques and marketing their work.

He employs weavers for a salary ranging from Rs 6,000 and Rs 12,000 per month and hands out annual increments. “I am trying to create a platform for Indian weavers to display their skills on a bigger podium through my shows,” says Mandal.

The weavers apart, Mandal has big plans for his own work too. The designer is working on taking his label across the country with franchise outlets. He is also branching out into designing accessories like scarves, shoes, stoles alongside his clothes. There are also hand bags and laptop bags made from a mix of natural fibres and leather. “Today, fashion is not about transforming the look but about transforming the personality,” he points out.

Mandal was selected to showcase his work at the Indian Fashion Carnival that was scheduled to be held in Kolkata from September 10-12. It should have been a spectacular platform, what with Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra rumoured to be the showstoppers at the grand finale of the event.

But unfortunately, the fashion extravaganza has now been postponed indefinitely.

“Such hasty decisions on the part of organisers to call off events will have an adverse impact on the fashion industry in Kolkata. And the worst hit are upcoming designers who look forward to such events for a break,” says Mandal.

Rarely spotted in the page3 circuit, the shy designer says, “My work must speak instead of my words.” He likes to spend time with his family and says he owes a lot of his success to his elder brother Palash, who guided his business decisions, and the love and support of his childhood sweetheart and now wife Srima, and his seven-month-old son Ean.