Manish Arora (Q3274)
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Manish Arora is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Manish Arora |
Manish Arora is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
1997
designer
Switching from the runway to a presentation format did nothing to alleviate the scrum at Manish Arora, who this season showed at the hall of mirrors inside the Passage Jouffroy, a stunning mid-19th-century brasserie turned salon within one of Paris’s most-beloved covered passageways. The ensuing traffic jam was a head-turner for tourists and locals alike.Inside, guests were greeted by a cabaret-style walk through Arora’s “Smiley World”: the performer and model Luc Bruyere—a ringer for a young Mick Jagger in a patched, embroidered denim vest and long pink skirt with mirror embroidery—sang a balladic cover of the Sister Sledge classic “We Are Family” while standing on a rotating podium. Groupings of models—an LGBTQAI “army of dreamers that defy dogma and definition,” the show notes explained—twirled, leaned, and posed, gazing coolly down at visitors who leaned in to inspect pieces such as a skirt that took three or four embroiderers about 30 days to make, Arora reckoned. The rare opportunity for a close-up was a clever social media strategy; it also made this reporter wonder if, in Arora’s case, a Paris runway is really necessary after all.The designer pointed out that the LGBTQ community was celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Indian Supreme Court’s decision to strike down section 377, therebydecriminalizing homosexual relationships there. “Finally, we are all one, in India too,” he said. “To commemorate that, we wanted to bring together our family of very special people and friends from all over.”Even before the doors opened, Instagram sensation Ryan Burke had put in a day’s work, having risen at 1 a.m. to do his makeup (his pastel feather headpiece, too, was his own design). “I feel in full form because I love wearing this level of makeup, and I rarely get to wear this level of clothing to go with it,” he offered.Intensely embroidered outfits in butterfly colors are Arora’s version of office girls’ attire, for example, a color flow of a sequined suit modeled by Dragoness Lola von Flame, the alter-ego of fellow fashion designer Laurent Mercier; or perhaps a tangerine skirt done in colorful mandalas and gold trim. The moment also offered an opportunity to reprise favorite archival silhouettes and mix those with “all things bright and beautiful” including metallic gold corsets, outsize bows, and new iterations of the sweatshirts Arora’s fans can’t get enough of, plus an extra helping of fringe.
All this muchness was also a teaser of sorts: By year’s end, Arora will open his first store in India, in Delhi. Then, in 2021, he will stage a 30th-anniversary presentation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
28 September 2019
Manish Arora fans tend to get their glitter on like they’re going to a fabulous exotic wedding in some fairy-tale world. But given the crush at the door of the American Cathedral, you’d think they were jostling for a front row seat to the Second Coming.The singer, yoga guru, and Crazy Horse alum Aria Crescendo, a friend of the designer who appeared at his show a few seasons back, went all-out bridal, posing for photographers at the altar in a floral-strewn gown and spiky diadem. “I love Manish’s clothes because they’re always out of the ordinary,” she offered. “I’ve had enough of fashion people staying very safe in black and traditional colors. I just like craziness and color.”She was in good company. With Finally Normal People, as Arora named his show, he delivered a “motley cru ofMad Maxbohemians.” It’s unlikely that the designer actually intended to conflate his apocalyptic androids with a French oenological term, but you got the drift. In Arora’s world you can be sure that “dressing for the Armageddon,” as he put it, means stepping out in a psychedelic blaze‚ an all-out maximalist extravaganza that riffs on Jazz Age flappers, country-and-western Americana, survivalist desertscapes, Hollywood, and spiritualism. And that’s just for starters.Parsing an Arora show is always one of Paris Fashion Week’s biggest sprints. With so much muchness dancing before the eye, you have to be swift or you might miss a masterful dégradé swish of sequins on a skirt that, in a more subdued setting (like maybe the red carpet?), could be a head-turner. Ditto the sleeveless jacket embroidered with peacock-feather motifs. In the era of the message tee, Arora also gets a nod for a couple numbers that seem to neatly sum up the mood of the moment, in the macro sense. One was a “What if this is all real.” But the hands-down winner was an ode to fashion’s current obsession with self-affirmation, and it’s going to be catnip to Arora’s base: “I am the one I’ve been waiting for.”
12 March 2019
There’s always a lot going on at a Manish Arora show, on the runway and off. That his audience is willing (if not necessarily happy) to pretend they’re not wilting in an oven-like clear plastic show tent on an unseasonably warm fall day speaks volumes about their loyalty to the designer.Backstage before the show, Arora was in a buoyant mood. “Last season we were more in a spiritual zone,” he said. “This time, the character has decided to be herself.” The poster model for that manifesto was the stylist who goes by the name Hungry, who was wearing towering shoes, doe-eye contact lenses, and lashes that would make Bambi green with envy. She wore a powder blue gown with pink hearts, pom-poms, pearls, and a veiled neckline deep enough to show off her tattoos. “When I saw the outfit yesterday, I just really wanted to be as much as my outfit is. It’s too much, so I wanted to be just that for today,” said Arora.The designer added that he was charging into new terrain with “sporty and sexy together,” that is, placing his signature hand embellishments within a sporty context. Fortunately, PSG (Paris Saint-Germain soccer team) was on hand to collaborate on that first bit, with Kylian Mbappé in the lead. (It’s worth noting that PSG has recently opened training academies in India.) Those were fun, in an OTT kind of way. There followed a parade of fashion “jocks,” if you will, wearing a shower of Indian embroidery, sweatshirts emblazoned withGirls Just Wanna Have Fun, and scores of girls all gussied up to paint the town. The show’s spirit animal was the panther, rendered as handbags, neon-colored hearts styled as leopard print with a lashing of gold, and—arrestingly—as built-out shoulders with gleaming green eyes. Elsewhere, there was an extravaganza of a wedding-cake dress and a bag to go with it.“It’s like the girls have stepped out of an Antonio Lopez book,” the designer offered. It was all that and more—and Arora’s base can never get enough of it.
28 September 2018
Manish Arora is in a spiritual mood this season, according to his show notes. The show he sent out, however, looked more like a riot of color. One sweatshirt proclaimed, “Pink and Gold is my religion.” Now there’s a shoe that fits. Orange, and “mystical midnight blues” plucked somewhat breathlessly from the robes of the wizard Merlin also served as touchstones. That there was a rabbit—the Chinese emoji Tuzki—only added to the frenzy. And not just as an Instagram op—the critter cropped up on the runway too, both the actual one and as meta-theater, as an emoji on a catwalk on a sweatshirt. (Got that?)Moving back to the idea of Zen for a moment, Arora riffed on cherry blossom brocades and chrysanthemum thread-work on iterations of worker clothes, with starburst motifs, koi fish, and sequined Eiffel Towers thrown in for good measure. Not content to wear his heart merely on his sleeve, the designer showered the motif all over the place, from a jacket finished in a stylized iteration of exotic skin etched in rivulets of gold, to little Boogie Bomb minaudières in the shape of a heart with gold horns and fangs. Those were hilariously OTT and charming—surefire catnip for Arora’s base.Other pieces were as improbable as the feathers glued to one model’s fingertips. Taken all together, it was overwhelming. Parsed, you could very well picture the separates on one of the designer’s vividly dressed fans—of which there were many, notably a Frenchwoman in a hot-pink jumpsuit that seemed to deliberately match the show invitations. That’s a lot of synergy for one room. But there was a perfectly good reason for it: Manish Arora is celebrating the opening of five stand-alone stores in China this year.
1 March 2018
“Manish has the biggest heart ever and he gives so much love,” said jewelry designer Noor Fares, who considers the designer a close friend. They’re close enough that this latest Manish Arora outing was very much conceived with her in mind. “I was so touched; it was the sweetest thing ever,” she gushed before the show, noting that they traveled to Burning Man together last year.While Arora has drawn inspiration from his inner circle in the past, Fares as his muse was a great match. Similar to all his collections, this one combined a dizzying variety of captivating prints and a heaping dose of sequined dazzle. The motifs reflected cross-cultural references, both far and wide: Aztec animals, Arabic mosaics, wallpaper florals, and more. The ornamentation spanned delicate Indian Zardozi embroidery to Native American feathers.But the languid looks that opened the lineup, followed by the preppy cardigans, shirtdresses, and unstructured blazers, suggested he had recast his trippy style as tony—think: Audrey on acid. And this wasn’t simply a question of styling, although all the shoulder-draped layers were a definite giveaway. It was an all-around effort via silhouettes and sensibility to get jet-set types to take notice. Never, for instance, would a longtime follower expect to see the phrasearistocratic attitudeassociated with Arora; but there it was—and rightly so—in the program notes (coupled withbohemian spirit).Fares’s personal style is proof that there are society gals who might be open to wearing the Wonderland versions of Giambattista Valli and Valentino. And Arora should consider sticking around for a while in this realm—not abandoning his easy embellished denim, while further exploring the finer, fancier looks that closed the show. Its title, by the way, was Ready to Love, which is also the name of his forthcoming fragrance. Guests got a first whiff of the heady bouquet with its notes of rose, labdanum, black currant, and sandalwood. “This is my most romantic yet,” he said of the collection, with his Love, quite literally, in the air.
28 September 2017
Program notes indicated that this year marked Manish Arora’s 10th anniversary but didn’t specify that it is was his 10th anniversaryin Paris, as the accomplished Indian designer has been in the biz for far longer. He held the show in the Grand Palais, which inevitably confers a special occasion—even more so in Arora’s case, given the hodgepodge spots chosen most recently. He was clearly aiming bigger than his usual exuberant, psychedelic, festival-girl fare. The verdict: Arora elevated his high fashion to high fashion (get it?).Backstage, he noted that this was “a show of clothes on models,” which was another way of saying, au revoir, Fluffy—the vibrantly dyed Pomeranian who shocked the crowds of recent seasons. Gone, too, were the street casting and boldface cameos. He called the collection Cosmic Love, ostensibly giving him permission to comingle source material from earth (tribal ornamentation, Aztec–meets–Art Deco, and peacock prints) and space (rockets, planets, and constellations), as long as good vibes prevailed. Beyond his usual kaleidoscopic embroideries, lavish Swarovski sparkle, and trippy digital prints, he introduced several labor-intensive and novelty fabrications, including op art denim achieved through both wash and appliqué, hand-cut velvet, and boiled wool patchwork. Most significant, he tended toward chicer silhouettes that conjured bohemian space queens.Might such galactic glam be what women wear 40 light-years away in some colony rotating around Trappist-1? Certainly, for the less flamboyant creatures among us, the lineup could easily be broken down to extract an elongated quilted bomber here and a silver Dupioni silk trouser there. The denim was genuinely cool, as would be many of the tops and tunics (once stripped of the costumey head wraps, fluoro neck collars, and pearl body beads). You need only remember Arora’s light-up shoes from yesteryear to realize what a giant leap the embellished velvet booties represent.In other news, Arora was part of an Indian delegation invited to meet Queen Elizabeth II earlier this week as part of the U.K.-India Year of Culture. A photo shows him sporting his insignia of the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, which he received last year. Asked whether the distinction at all motivated this collection, he acknowledged that it felt time to depart from cloying cupcake themes. An anniversary cake, however, seems well deserved.
2 March 2017
Nothing quite prepares you for a blue Pomeranian—even when you remember him as being purple last season. But Fluffy the dog was one of many reprised ingredients that went intoManish Arora’srunway recipe for happiness. A choker fronted with a fried egg, rainbow-striped creepers, and My Little Pony imagery were others. The designer explained that the Fall show left him wondering whether he could serve up an even bigger helping of his signature joie de vivre. The main difference for Spring: layering vintage and future flavors, which he attained by arbitrarily mixing archetypes from the 1950s through ’70s. Reduced, restyled, and seasoned with a liberal amount of escapism, the looks ranged from cosmic schoolgirl to Ziggy Stardust housewife.Because Arora always indulges in fantasy ornamentation, the washed-denim varsity jackets and psychedelic circle patterns from Indian artist Bharti Kher made the freshest statements. An off-white dressy sweat suit embroidered with flowers cleansed the palate towards the halfway mark. A new grouping of couture confections in vivid hues conveyed Arora’s appreciation for classic beauty—but the best part was how he dressed them down with sports jackets and sneakers, thus closing the show with kick. An all-inclusive “cast of shiny happy people” (with guest appearances by Blanca Li, singer Bishi, and Pandemonia, an anonymous personage from London known for her latex doll disguise) contributed to his ebullient brew. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Arora doesn’t address deeper notions of wearing happiness versus being happy—which is why these clothes seem better suited as wardrobe stimulants for a trip to Burning Man than day-in-day-out dressing. Someone, ask the blue dog how he feels.
29 September 2016
It was inevitable that the November terrorist attacks in Paris would surface as some interpretation or another this season. Manish Arora lives in the area where they took place and was out in the streets when the incidents began. Nothing about his Fall collection explicitly tells this story. But choosing an eclectic restaurant venue steps from his apartment and casting a roster of mostly unprofessional models—from girls scouted spontaneously toEllen von Unwerthand Chantal Thomass—did hint at his desire to keep things homier than usual.Then again, Arora, who was appointed a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur last month, is a master of escapism, and, go figure, he escaped this season to America, where Hannelore Knuts set the scene and the swagger in a printed vest over a mohair coat covered with Western patterning, like some sort of hipster healer. Next came girls wearing dresses that conjured up Dolly Parton on molly. There was a rockabilly loner sporting a studded suede neoprene skirt suit, and psychedelic cowgirl twins. And then there was Fluffy, a Pomeranian dyed a cartoonish shade of violet, who accompanied Look 14. The poor dog gave its best Blue Steel.Arora pointed out his shift away from shiny textiles; one could be forgiven for thinking he said “mad” not “matte” fabrics. But employing suede, leather, and denim as neutral backdrops allowed him to go Wild Wild West on the treatments and fabrications, from jeans pimped up with covered wagons and fluorescent beading to a fantastically folkloric flounced dress. As usual, the looks were so excessive that the randomness of beading and African wax cloth should simply be accepted as Arora’s freedom of expression. It’s a relief, really, that his upbeat eccentricity remains unchanged.
3 March 2016
Backstage before his show,Manish Aroraintroduced Bunnyla, a floppy-eared fashionista who would be making several appearances on the catwalk, in some cases enrobed just like her model chaperones. The designer then revealed Bunnyla’s belly ring and the condoms tucked into her bejeweled briefs. For writers accustomed to finding young women in a state of undress, the sight of Arora enthusiastically lifting a stuffed toy’s skirt might have been a first. But he did this by way of explaining how the Spring collection marked a departure into adult territory. Why be pigeonholed into couture tracksuits for raver girls when he could stretch his wings with glamorous gypsy dresses for disco queens? Most noticeably, Arora swapped the moon boots for metallic platforms by Terry de Havilland and kept his lineup light on pants (the handful of men’s looks notwithstanding). In turn, he went extra-heavy on full skirts in highlighter hues, shoulder- and midriff-bearing tops trimmed with laser-cut filmy fringes, and minidresses exploding with plastic flowers.When asked why he pushed into a more feminine, arguably costumey register at exactly the moment that people are gravitating toward sport clothes, Arora joked, “How much more could I do?,” adding that he wasn’t so much concerned about his customers maturing as elevating his psychedelic aesthetic to a new level of luxe. But by now you’d think he might realize how easy it is to overdose, and past a certain point in the show, the groovy, folkloric buzz wore off. Luckily, he was saved by veteran model Debra Shaw, who brought a welcome dash of diva to his decadence. Bunnyla, meanwhile, will be multiplied many times over for retail.
1 October 2015
For his Fall collection, Manish Arora wants people to know that "winter is coming": The top that opened his show signaled those three words, banner-style, beneath a computer-generated owl. Of course,Game of Thronesaficionados will immediately point out that he's nodding to the title of the show's debut episode. And as source material, the fictional medieval land where the program takes place presented Arora with an excuse to explore darker, decadent territory. But because glitter, fuchsia hearts, Moon Boots, and baby backpacks are essentially his four elements, the outcome proved more space-age clan girl than an homage to Queen Cersei.And this latest archetype proved convincing. The die-hard maximalist conjured up a heroine who rises in the morning and must decide between the sweatshirt emblazoned with sparkly irises, the harlequin diamonds interspersed with lightning bolts, or the one with faux-leather chain mail sleeves and foamy feather facsimiles. On an active day, she'll wear hot pink velvet sweatpants; otherwise, she defaults to one of her many kilts—either the brocade or the kaleidoscopic botanical print—and some shimmery lattice legwear. Most importantly, she prizes her accessories, rotating a breastplate that traces her thoracic vertebrae with a raven perched on one shoulder. For evening, she tops a regal red dress with a timeless cape trimmed in gold thorns, and invariably carries a skull-shaped minaudière (the fruit-patterned one is her fave). While she has a weakness for rhino rings—all those feathers, chains, and spikes flatter her nose—she'll hide behind a gilded gladiator mask after a late night.Follow Arora for long enough, and you figure out his template: The same futuristic-folkloric nomad reappears in different settings, all rich with decorative possibility. Some of the wackiness proposed here will end up being watered down for retail. But the imagination and assembly required to reach this parallel world are what turn a highly detailed collection into a far-out trip.
5 March 2015
Manish Arora received some sage advice from a grande dame of Paris retail: that he needed to lighten up. Not his spirit—Arora is as jolly as designers come—but his fixation with ornamentation. It's all relative, of course. Scale back the embellishments on Arora's designs by half and they would still qualify as maximalist by most standards. It was clear today, though, that he took her words to heart—at least to the extent that a fluorescent eye or nose-ringed goddess appeared across the final series of sweater dresses that will represent Arora's entry-level retail offering. But even here, the Lurex yarn was iridescent, as if to underscore that the designer will never reject the trippy touches that bring him such joy.So rather than go into further detail about the details—suffice it to say there were pearlescent astronauts, golden space pods, roses in high relief, and baseball caps emblazoned with some sort of republic of rococo motif—the collection was most compelling when Arora explored the possibilities of sheer paneling. Most often, he layered it atop embellishment to create a gauzy haze of foreground and background. But in a radical development for the designer, he also employed it as striped negative space. Leave Arora's total looks for progressive pop stars like M.I.A. and Grimes (whose songs played throughout the show): One might go for the bike shorts, hooded robe, and "gladiator cyber sandals"; the other for the holographic crop top with printed palazzo pants and water-bottle belt. And he was clever to push the kaleidoscopic sportswear. It's easy street-style bait. Otherwise, a gossamer T-shirt depicting Arora's pastel otherworld might be as far out as the average fashion earthling is willing to go.
25 September 2014
To call Manish Arora's Fall collection a sugar rush would be the understatement of the week (yes, this early on). In his most ambitious and eccentric collection yet, the maximalist imagined a clan of "sweet-toothed nomads and gummy-bear gypsies" adorned in enough saccharine kitsch to give you a bellyache. As research, the designer said he purchased bags and bags of candy. Then he combined ethnic and edible ingredients—generous Peruvian circle skirts and Popsicles, baggy Chinese workers' trousers and cupcakes—applied beading as if it were frosting, and finally cherry-topped the looks with furry, fruity caps and earmuffs. For the embroidered pieces, Arora channeled the whimsy of Wonka while drawing on the craftsmanship of his Indian artisans. All those micro plastic jelly beans and doughnuts had to be specially fitted with tiny holes so they could be placed in precise graphic motifs. Tiny coiled tubes were impressively stitched into cupcake shapes.But Arora made sure to satisfy commercial cravings; those nylon backpacks with floppy legs that approximated a baby sling will sell fast. Candy-striper knits in red and white were equal parts cute and clever. Covered in large-scale photo-realist prints, the sporty separates would be the perfect fit for a K-pop video (see Katy Perry's "California Gurls" for inspiration).You might start to wonder, however, whether there was a more substantial geo-sociopolitical message to the collection: Imagine if the residents of Candy Land were forced to flee their sugar shacks in the wake of new threats from the Insulin Resistance. But no, Arora's raison d'être was sweetness and optimism to the core. By the end, when the models took a turn with the house lights dimmed so their blinking LED kicks would provide one last jolt of cloying, you weren't sure whether to hand Arora a gargantuan lollipop for originality or put him on an indefinite sugar ban.
26 February 2014
Backstage after his show, Manish Arora could be heard telling an influential Parisian editor, "I've woken up; the devil is out." Well, the designer must have been under quite a spell, because today's collection came across like a video game full of flappers on molly.In envisioning Josephine Baker at a rave, Arora gave himself license to incorporate fluoro Art Deco patterns and kaleidoscopic botanicals in a single outfit. If you accept that restraint isn't his style, the pattern clash activated the eye—even more so when broken up by Necker cubes (the Escher-esque geometric pattern that appears on bistro floors all over Paris). The thing about Arora is that all of the visual noise is backed up with exceptional beading and hand embellishment, all executed in his home country, India. The surface treatments are not arbitrary; they represent his cultural influence. Yet this might have buried his other key message: The designer sent out a surprisingly sporty, lightweight collection—one that was anchored by pebbly sweatshirts, waterproof parkas, embellished backpacks, and knitted flapper dresses. Only the unwieldy plastic bead fringes and heavier brushed cotton seemed ill suited to a night of dancing.Arora rehashed and remixed M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls" as the soundtrack—she's a friend, apparently—and surely she would appreciate the riot of emoji-style lipstick, heart, and airplane motifs (the last an arbitrary nod to Amelia Earhart). Overall, Arora's devil remains obstinately devoted to detail.
25 September 2013
Well, that was a lot to look at. There was such a super-abundance of colors, prints, materials, embellishments, and themes at today's Manish Arora show, you sort of owed your eyes a break when it finished. How pleasing it would be, you thought, just to stare into the infinite blankness of a freshly painted white wall for a little while…At any rate, Arora does himself no favors by throwing so many ideas on the runway; the profusion makes it exceedingly difficult to extract key propositions, or standout looks. There were at least three collections jammed together here: one emphasizing splashy digital prints, another that hewed to the very Indian colors of pink and yellow and featured vaguely Deco black crystal embroidery, and then a natty group in textural navy and black that Arora had decorated with various kinds of jewel-like embellishment. In addition to that, there were a few ideas, distinct from the rest, that he seemed a bit less invested in, like the navy and green Lurex pieces or the velvet dresses heaving with chain.The textural black and navy looks formed the collection within this collection that should have been the basis of the entire show. A little black dress with sculpted hips, which Arora had dappled with varied gold sequins that looked like they had spilled out of a junk drawer, was particularly fresh; it would have been nice to see him elaborate on that idea a bit more. But the trim skirts and tops with multicolor stones were nearly as fine and felt just as distinctive. You wouldn't mistake those pieces for the work of any other designer. There were some strong looks elsewhere in the collection as well, but none of them came quite so fully formed. Arora has a lot to say, but this season the message kept getting lost in the mix.
27 February 2013
Manish Arora was on home territory today, mining the myriad flourishes of dress and personal decoration to be found in the Indian subcontinent. Jewelry was the real star of this season, and lots of it. The designer has teamed up with Amrapali—known for its fine jewels—to introduce a joint jewelry collection. Here there was a combination of the ancient and contemporary, resulting in a place where diadems might seem perfectly realizable for the everyday. But that, it seems, is Manish Arora's world, one of graphic delineation, flights of fancy, and fulsome flourishes. Still, there were plenty of amazing bracelets and necklaces to choose from if you are not a diadem person. The problems came when the jewelry appeared as photo-printed patterns on the clothing, detracting and distracting from the actual jewels rather than bouncing off them in a more surrealist manner—which seemed the intention. Much more successful was when embroidery and appliqué were used; the excess seemed to work, but then it just wouldn't stop.If a collection ever needed editing and defining, this was it. There were possibly three, four, five bases for collections here. And so many technical flourishes that bravura became blah. If only Arora worked with one of the great stylists—he might achieve a very different effect.
26 September 2012
Manish Arora did street style. Not the kind you're used to, but the scrappy pop visuals of graffiti and street art, merged with his own OTT sensibility, highly detailed workmanship, and the classic couture silhouettes he tapped into last season. Appropriately, Fall's mise-en-scène was an industrial open-air space on the river where a hoodie-clad crew—Parisian graffiti artists Rude, Vizion, and Broke—spray-painted the backdrop as models walked on by. (Be thankful Style.com isn't yet scent-enabled. Those fumes were a shock to the brain cells.)What Arora does is still quite happily a bit cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. He's a guy who could out-Gaga the Lady herself. But this new injection of relative reality—which last season he attributed to wanting to let his freak flag fly at his other job as Paco Rabanne's creative director—can make his ideas and meticulous execution shine. Take the polished little satin skirtsuit or cocoon coat printed all over with surreal highlighter-hued faces and appliquéd with cherry blossoms (the motif was the work of Brooklyn street artist Judith Supine, whose images Arora found while researching, and which were used throughout). Or a New Look-ish skirt in iridescent laser-cut leather paired with a tulle blouse dotted with flowers, with not a golden ribcage in sight. A touch more reality: Arora's continuing collaboration with Notify Jeans.For his typically grand finale, a parade of ten models in crinoline-puffed graffiti-print dresses marched out to pose in front of the freshly sprayed-on handiwork, which ended up reading "Life Is Beautiful." In Arora's world, it's fun too.
29 February 2012
Aside from the slightly random vignette of theater (starring the transcendent Rossy de Palma) that opened Manish Arora's show, his Spring collection's most shocking statement was… normalcy. After the show, Maria Luisa Poumaillou, who falls light years away on the style spectrum from typical Arora-ites like Nicki Minaj, gushed that she wanted to wear it. The effect was wholly intended. As Arora explained, his aim was easy clothes and believability, and to set this collection apart from what he's planning for his debut at Paco Rabanne a few days from now. "That's going to be ashow," he warned.Of course, normalcy is a relative term with Arora. He may have hopped on the elegant sixties-couture bandwagon, but the version he showed was still very much his own, which meant a bit alien and kookily futuristic. An iridescent metallic appliqué minidress trimmed with blush marabou might have been the chicest thing in Barbarella's closet. The pearl mesh of a peplumed checked dress looked like circuitry, and a party frock pieced with sharp panels of double-faced satin and sequins was lovely, but might make a Trekkie fall in love with you. It was all wearable, but certainly not run-of-the-mill, and never boring.Some of the clothes were quite beautiful: The dégradé effect of black and white butterfly-wing sequins bursting into a ruff of feathers on a midi dress certainly qualified. Arora wrapped things up on a clean and pop note with a photo print abstracted from a picture taken by Robert Altman at 1970's Holy Man Jam festival. That was a time when the future really was imagined to be kooky and bright. Those smiling and clapping faces on standaway coats and skinny cigarette pants were having just as much fun as Arora seems to have designing his clothes.
28 September 2011
First in Delhi and Mumbai, now in Paris, Manish Arora is a longtime fashion showman who says he likes to raise his stakes each season. This time he did so with a dramatically bearded magician dressed in billowing black who conjured model Ashley Smith on the runway, out of fire, then out of thin air, and finally split her in two.But Arora's tricks aren't meant to divert your attention from his clothes. As if that were possible. Still, the fox fur stole with glowing green eyes aside, the designer was actually in a slightly subdued mode. The cuts on coats and dresses to the knee had round leg-of-mutton shoulders and lightly sculpted sleeves, but were for the most part as classic as he gets. All the better to see Arora's riot of embellishment and prints, this season done in collaboration with German artist Amrie Hoffstater. They had a kind of complex kaleidoscopic or fractal-like quality, mixed with the dense craftiness of a Mexican Day of the Dead altar.Last season Arora wrapped dresses in bright gold claws, the most famous being the one worn by Nicki Minaj. (She must have given a tip to her friend-collaborator Kanye West, sitting front-row today.) This season's versions were flexible metallic carapaces that fit like futuristic corsetry—a possible clue that Arora is already thinking about his first collection at Paco Rabanne this October.
2 March 2011
Manish Arora used the term "futuristic baroque" to describe his Spring collection. But considering the over-the-top, Ladies Who Gaga clothes shown today, perhaps the slightly riper era of rococo would be more appropriate. It was a time when artistsreallylet their freak flags fly, as the Mumbai-born Arora is often known to do.As for the futuristic part, Arora provided a base of candy-bright colors in latex leggings and streamlined color-blocked clothes for his oversized appliqués, and big shiny flourishes of gold horns that wrapped around legs and shoulders. With peplums shaped like taillights and contrast-hued flanges on skirts, models looked like race cars built for the Mumbai 500, clearly an event where you're rated on style as much as speed. It's probably not a coincidence that Arora collaborated with wacky milliner Christophe Coppens for hats formed into toy cars.Coming after the above, the show's finale of sequined dresses and suits with postcard motifs was relatively serene. Perhaps it was Arora's way of saying he wishes you were here on this strange trip with him—it certainly looks like a fun journey.
29 September 2010
The show notes name-checked Art Deco, but Bollywood-meets-Blade Runnermight've been a more apt description of Manish Arora's more-is-more show (which was held, rather ironically, in a dusty but not unimpressive old library in the historic Lycée Henri IV). "Bollywood" because nearly every piece was embroidered with crystals or beads (some of the subtlest and best in the geometric patterns synonymous with Deco), andBlade Runnerbecause of the sci-fi warrior shapes of the shoulders…and let's not forget the LED headdresses, like earphones tuned to a frequency from deep space, with which the final three models accessorized their fluorescent Louise Brooks bobs.There were some potential crossover hits, including a 1920's-ish sack dress with gray sequins above the drop waist and below it a starburst of hot pink embroidery; a vibrant stained-glass tee and matching jodhpurs; and a structured dress with embroidery tracing the neon-lights pattern of its fabric. But Arora is most definitely on his own trip.
3 March 2010