FASHION SHOTS
Dream guests at MET Gala table
Oprah Winfrey, Jennifer Lawrence, Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett
Women he wants to dress
Hillary Clinton, Zadie Smith, Erykah Badu and Tilda Swinton
What India means to him
Before I came to India, fashion designing was seen as a career for a bored housewife. The real cementing of my dreams happened here. I realised that making a career and a good living out of fashion was a possibility.
On the Prabal Gurung woman
She is very aware of the space that she occupies and the relationship that she has with the world. She has a curious mind, is phenomenally engaging and complex. Her biggest strength comes from her femininity. I want to be surrounded by women like that.
His aesthetic
Elevated ease. Sportswear with a glamorous edge.
In the future
To expand Prabal Gurung Sport—the activewear collection be impossible for Gurung’s client roster which already includes the likes of Michelle Obama (who had invited him to The White House more than once), the Duchess of Cambridge, Queen Rania, Kate Hudson, Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra.
WOMEN AS INSPIRATION
Strong and determined women like these have inspired his SS 2017 collection that was available at a limited edition trunk show at Le Mill in late October last year. They include his mother, “who always wanted to change the idea that the higher you go, the fewer women there are” and Gloria Steinem, whose book My Life on The Road was a big influence. “She embodies our ideal of femininity, celebrating the complexity of a woman, layered far beneath surface beauty.” It has resulted in beautiful floral prints, lots of solid colours—red, black and blue—and cuts and silhouettes that exude femininity.
Feminism has always been on Gurung’s mind but more so recently in the event of Clinton’s candidacy and Michelle Obama’s global girls’ education initiative Let Girls Learn. Gurung says, “I want to be able to tell my two nieces, aged 11 and 15, that fashion need not be just frivolous. I want girls to understand that they are enough, and for my nephews to know that equality should be the
norm and not an exception.”
In addition to the Prabal Gurung Sport, the activewear collection he launched last year, he partnered with Lane Bryant, a leading retail store for plus-size women, which further highlights his commitment to celebrating diversity in fashion. “As someone who was always seen as ‘different,’ I am well acquainted with the feeling that my needs were not mainstream enough to be met by society,” wrote Gurung on the website Lenny Letter, apologising to the community.
“I know what it feels like to be slighted, and I’m embarrassed that we, as an industry, have overlooked hundreds of millions of women.” The need to come up with this collection, he said, was triggered by two incidents—when a plus-size audience member at a panel on diversity was snubbed with “Oh yeah, we’ll get out to you,” remark, and sensing the “longing and hesitation” in a customer at a trunk show.
BOLLYWOOD FAN BOY
There is one thing though that will never change and that is Gurung’s credentials as a Bollywood buff. He counts Karan Johar as one of his friends and loves to sing Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar songs. So awestruck was he by Deepika Padukone’s grace and beauty during her visit to his office in the Big Apple that he crooned “Nazar jo teri laagi main deewani
ho gayi” (from the song “Deewani Mastaani” from Bajirao Mastani). “I have the delusion that I’m an amazing actor,” he said when asked about exploring a stint on the big screen. Bollywood, Gurung says, with its billowing sarees and rain dance sequences, love for grandeur, gave him the ability “to fly, to just go [out] there and imagine the most impossible things.”
He is also a designer who never tires of talking about his admiration for India and how instrumental a role it has played in shaping him. “A major chunk of what I am today—as a designer and as a person—is because of the time I spent in India,” said Gurung, who spent nine years in India. Gurung has fond memories of eating in Khan Market, shopping at Fab India and partying with his friends. Ask him about his idea of India and he says, “‘India’ is beautifully representative of how to be modern yet rooted in tradition and heritage. India, especially Mumbai, is a hustle in the most real way. It is also one of the warmest yet most terrifying of places. I tell my friends that if you haven’t been to India then all your senses are not awakened. Whether it is visually with all the colours, tastes, smells, textures, India is alive. I know what it feels to be present, to feel everything and for all your senses to be working overtime.”