Inspired by iconic 70s film Grey Gardens, Mumbais Aniket Satam pays homage to human emotion through his retro ensembles.
By Asmita Aggarwal
It was Sabaysachi Mukherjees mentoring in the competition Sketch to Store on Bindaas TV that catapulted Mumbai boy Aniket Satam to fame when he won the coveted prize. He got to show at the Amazon India Fashion Week SS 17 and also complete a three-week styling course at the famed Istituto Marangoni, Milan.
Interestingly, Anikets journey into fashion happened by chance, when he had wanted to do a creative course in writing, but ended up studying fashion at the BD Somani Institute of Art and Fashion Technology, Mumbai.
A middle-class Maharashtrian boy whose family wanted him to be an engineer or doctor never thought design would be his area of expertise, despite that they fully supported him.Raised by his grandmom, as his mother passed away two days after his birth, Aniket admits that Sabya helped shape his ideology which helped him find his nichepreppy, sporty silhouettes which redefine classics, with a juxtaposition of colour blocking to add an edginess. I chose womenswear because you can do so much more and it gives you the creative freedom to experiment with new pattern cutting techniques, he admits.
With a new set of designers launched every year, it will be survival of the fittest, as women now are more individual in their tastes and ready to combine vintage with high street. The challenge for me as a designer at 28, is to balance creativity with commerce, which I think time will teach me, he adds.
Inspired by Grey Gardens, a documentary he watched while he was graduating, it left an indelible mark on his psyche. This film is about the lives of two eccentric relatives of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Edie Bouvier Beale and her mother, Edith, who live on the sprawling Long Island estate. Made in 1975 and filmed by Albert and David Maysles it is an iconic representation of a once wealthy family and their descent into ruins as they live with their many cats, he says.
The line is American in thought so it has retro elements with gingham, sheer dresses, capri pants, trench coats with a palette as wide as daffodil yellow, poppy red, butterscotch and duck egg blue. The two motifs running through the line are embroidered cats and pansies. How these two women survived despite total alienation from society. What was interesting was their dresses– swimsuits with high-heels, a turban made from a sweater, brooches, worn by the ailing mom and her 58-year-old unmarried daughter as they talk about lost loves. It was the human emotion that fascinated me and how they make a world of their own in the chaos that surrounds them, he concludes.
