Old-world charm

Designer Manish Malhotra has entered the Rs 100-cr league, as he prepares to show at the upcoming India Couture Week. The author on the man and his creations

He is one of the most insouciant designers around. He has shunned traditional reds and pinks and adopted blues, burgundy and beige. When Manish Malhotra thinks couture, it is a mix of ideology and ideas. Dressed in a midnight blue button-down shirt and black trousers, he watches the rain outside as he sips his usual green tea at the Leela Palace in New Delhi. "For me, the focus is on the workmanship, embroideries and a vintage appeal, which I recreate using older karigars," muses the 48-year-old.

Malhotra took to couture nine years ago when he launched his eponymous label. This year he completes 24 years in costume design. It is perhaps fitting then that with turnover touching Rs 108 crore this year, Malhotra joins Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Tarun Tahiliani as designers raking in over Rs 100 crore in annual revenues.

It is, therefore, a happy Malhotra who will show at the India Couture Week, starting in Delhi on July 15. This year, he will show architectural patterns, with an inclination towards mirror work, and a prodigious combination of old-world embroidery techniques. His is a tryst with deep reds, emeralds and wine with gold work, inspired by Pakeezah, the 1972 film starring Meena Kumari. "But it will have the MM signature - flowy, congruous and mellifluous, not chunky, heavy, unmanageable," is how he describes his show. Malhotra's forte is bridal wear (Rs 1.75 lakh to Rs 10 lakh), diffusion (Rs 12,000 to Rs 38,000) and evening wear for men and women.

Many of his detractors wonder whether Malhotra knows how to make a fine distinction between Bollywood, where you are dressing a character, and fashion, where you are looking at buyers whose needs have to be satisfied with signature cuts. They say his appeal is helped by tinsel world's leading ladies wearing his outfits and walk-ing the ramp for him at top fashion events, and thus, as a designer confides, "creating a buzz around his design and his personality". Indeed, Malhotra counts film industry biggies as friends, among them Karan Johar whom he considers one of his closest buddies.

"Yes, a lot of people say that my success is because I am a Bollywood designer," admits the man from Mumbai. "But what does that even mean?" Now with his online store, which he launched two months ago, and his store at the Ambavata Complex in New Delhi's Mehrauli being received well by patrons, he feels he has answered his critics. "I let my work do the discreet talking. That, for me, is the best answer, really," he says.

"Slim is in - that's what every woman wants," Malhotra declares. "I use tulle, nets, textured silk and will start working on Benares weaves from next year." Ritu Kumar says young designers like Malhotra have given validity to Indian design. "These designers understand the new tech-savvy women who are clear about their aspirations and needs." Sunil Sethi, president of the Fashion Design Council of India, adds that Malhotra's understanding of women and glamour, his ideas and his attention to detail make him a winner of sorts. "He is adaptable and has reached where he has because he is committed to what he does," says Sethi.

Chennai-based Yagna Balaji, a journalist, got her wedding outfit specially ordered online from manishmalhotra.in. "It was a day reception and no one does pastels better than him. I needed a light colour, but not too simple. Plus, being a South Indian, I didn't want a typical lehenga, and Malhotra does that fusion thing so well," says Balaji.

The designer personally meets brides-to-be, who often surprise him by coming armed with information on their iPads about what he showed when and would prefer a particular outfit from a particular season. "He likes to make all his customers feel a part of his life," says Safir Anand, an intellectual property rights lawyer at Anand & Anand and a consumer.