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FEEL FLOWS
How different are early mornings in Goa, from early mornings in Delhi?
FIRST CITY finds out the answer in the unlikeliest of places; in our
exclusive fashion feature, in an interview with Wendell Rodricks.
Where there's talk of darzis, Coco Chanel, the importance of green
tea, several digressions, and looking back at iconic moments in
fashion
One of his all-time favourite images is of Malaika on a banyan tree,
Wendell's outfit draped on her, flowing and fluid, one with the roots,
in harmony with nature and the universe. A vision of peace, that black
and white. "Today, I feel, I can stand by the side of Karl Lagerfeld
or Jean Paul Gautier, and I can say, 'Listen, what you guys do is
great and I love it, but what I do is mine, it comes from me. It's my
creation, my statement, my legacy and contribution to this country.
It's not derived and it's Indian..." More to the point, "It's Goan."
He lives in Colvale, a remote village in south Goa, in a yellow
("symbolises the sun") and blue ("the skies... traditionally, these
are the Goan colours for houses") heritage villa, where his three dogs
and two cats get along better than the best of friends. The only
difference is that Napoleon, Zanzibar and Eva greet you at the door,
excited, tails wagging, while Tiger and Vircat emerge from the corners
somewhere to observe you and lick their paws. The neighbour's rooster
and bird-calls (Wendell's carefully planted trees offer them fruit)
take care of background ear candy. His office and studio is in Panjim,
20 kilometres away (which takes less than 30 minutes to drive to),
which houses his creations, and from where Wendell Rodricks projects
to the world. To Bombay and Delhi and Paris and New York: a quiet,
relaxed, gradual global take-over of sorts. "I like to put this resort
flavour into my clothes. The country never had this breezy feel in
fashion, and we use it intentionally, till today. If we can make the
garment more fluid, lighter, more referral to where it's coming from,
from Goa, we do it. We do it consciously." He owes this USP to a
moment of critical appreciation at Yves St Laurent, several years ago.
"In Paris, where I did my higher (studies in) creative design, I went
to YSL to show my portfolio, and this lady there said, 'Your designs
are very good, but I don't see anything of your country in them'. God
bless her, because that one sentence changed my life! It was so
revealing to me. Also, what she was not saying was, 'We do this
western style very well, so why don't you bring your Indian-ness into
it?'. I somehow never put my Indian-ness in, and I felt insulted,
ashamed, that I couldn't put my home state, Goa, and my country into
my creations." An almost dramatic epiphany followed - "I remember it
was August 15, 1988, and I came back to India, deciding that I want to
discover my country again."
There'd been other detours, successful ones at that. Wendell had
started out his professional life with hotel management; here's the
recap: "When I passed out from SSC, there was this very elegant lady
(and things always have to do with elegance, in my case somehow), Mrs
Panthaki, who came from the Institute of Hotel Management in Dadar,
and she came to explain the concept of five-star hotels opening up,
and showed us slides of the rooms and all; this is 1971 I'm talking
about, mind you!. I'd never been inside a Taj hotel room and she
talked about this as a booming industry. So, just for the heck of it,
I decided to do this, while all my other compatriots joined the
regular science streams. My parents were quite horrified - how was I
going to become a good Goan professional, a cook? I did the course; I
worked for two years in India, four years in the Middle East. And one
day, this lady saw my sketches at the club I was working in, in Oman,
and she looked at them and suggested I study professionally. It was
not the first time this was thrown at me, and I just decided to do it.
I was 26, doing extremely well in the hotel industry, a grand salary
of 40,000, which was very high at the time, but I threw it up and went
to Los Angeles, and did my degree in fashion. I liked America, but it
wasn't creative enough, so I went to Paris then." Of course, Wendell
could've just asked his cousins, those he'd designed for, or friends
who'd always ask him about what colour they should paint their walls.
He paints a few Goan childhood snapshots, "My mother, like most
mothers of that time, had this tailor who would come home during
festival time, you know, Christmas, Easter, weddings... and he would
bring these huge takas of cloth, bels of cloth, and I would just be
amazed and fascinated by them. That he could convert this flat fabric
into a work of beauty, for me, was magic... to see fabric become
something that was worn by a living person. I was interested in the
movement, how the fabric moves on a body, the fluidity that comes when
someone wears it. I also recall very distinctly, it might sound
bizarre, but I remember watching The Sound of Music, and there's this
scene when Julie Andrews cuts up the curtains and makes them into
picnic clothes for the children. I was fascinated by that. I started
doing things for my cousins, designing things for them, only those who
were close to me. When I was growing up, there was no concept of a
designer, there was no NIFT. One had heard of international designers,
but there were no designers in India. Rohit Khosla, James Ferreira,
they were not heard of as designers. They were associated with mills,
mills that produced clothes. And mills did fashion shows. Bombay
Dyeing, Calico et cetera."
When he got back from Paris, Wendell took up a job teaching at SNDT
College in Bombay. "I taught up till 1993, which is when I moved to
Goa, to settle there." Prior to the move, he worked with Hemant
Trivedi, and at Garden Vareli as chief designer, "Shilpa Shah, my
mentor there, told me you're working with polyester, but your heart is
in natural fabrics. She helped me psychologically and, quite
literally, financially, to start my own label in 1991. She could see
that I appreciated weave and fabric. Back then, it was all about big
broad shoulders, Joan Collins in Dynasty, bright colours."
Amidst a mouthful of the 8 am breakfast buffet ("I get all my ideas in
the morning. I'm up by 5.30 am max. By 10 am, I'm creatively
dead..."), between omelettes and green tea in Delhi, where we intially
meet, Wendell tells me he can do the top I'm wearing with "just iron
filings and vinegar". And also, importantly, the "bootis won't fade"
he smiles. At the flagship store in Panjim, where we insist on a
guided tour, it's easy to sense that Wendell's heart is fixated on
what they call The Eco-Room. Haldi and onion and anaar juice, guava
leaves and the local Goan cashew fruit, all comprise the making-of
process here, part of the being of the spiffily casual men's kurtas
that surround us and distract me so (that, and the turmeric yellow
yoga mats, which look and feel as if they're infused with that rush of
energy that a surya namaskar morning stretch brings on). Wendell's
pride reflects in his voice, "We're working with tribals here, working
on trees we can use as dyes. It's been a great seven-year experience,
because the forests have come back, the animals have come back, and
the tribals are very happy, because it's all natural stuff - unlike
those chemical dyes, which, as soon as they're out of the vats, are
poison. This is like pulp, manure, fertiliser, they take it for their
fields. I put this obvious concern for the environment into my
clothes, besides the relaxed resort flavour. I don't even know when I
became a designer-activist in Goa, but it happened." At the store, as
he's flitting about, sprained and swollen ankle notwithstanding, the
assistants and store managers are almost overawed, watching him, as
Wendell indulgently, passionately, lovingly, discusses all the little
details. He's pointing at the floor, currently, "The flooring is from
the 1930's, when the land was reclaimed. I put the colours on the
walls from the floors... I designed the whole space here. This is a
heritage part of Panjim, and no one can touch or break anything. And I
wanted it all very simple, in keeping with that spirit."
In what they call The White Room ("because I'm associated with the
colour"), Wendell stands in front of outfits displayed on clotheslines
("to tell you they don't shrink"), almost reminiscing about not having
second thoughts, "I don't think too much about my clothes, but I know
the psychology I make them with, for sure. It's been long, almost 20
years now, and it's been a great challenge and discipline to stick
with my philosophy. So many times, people have popped up and said,
'You know, Wendell, if you take this kurta, it's white linen, and if
you put a little bit of embroidery, it'll fly on the shelf', and I've
said, 'No. I want to keep it like this'. When a lady's wearing the
garment, first of all, she should feel comfortable. Secondly, someone
who's touching her garment shouldn't feel like they're touching a
cactus. I'm not saying sequins or embroidery are bad. They're very
much a part of our culture. But, in my mind, I'm sort of democratic
about my clothes. I'm not interested in making a party dress (though I
do it quite well), I'm interested in daily clothes, so it becomes a
part of people's lives." Fashion democracy has, in the past,
translated into "women of a certain size coming into my store and
crying", because they've found what they were looking for. "This is
very important to me - that a woman has a problem in her head that
she's too busty or hippy. At times, I feel like I'm a feelgood doctor.
And all women feel like they have fat hips or whatever. Even the
models feel that! If they get a small pimple, it's like 'Oh my god!
I'm fat!'. I think it's a great thing to study bodies and give people
confidence through clothes, something that Malaika has taught me,
because I've seen her transition from a 17 or 18-year-old girl to a
sexy woman to a wife and mother. I've been watching her body and
learning. And when we measure people, believe me, between a Malaika
hip, which is 36, and an average Indian hip size, which is 40, that's
four inches! On a garment, it's like one inch front and back on one
side, and another on the other side. Just that! And we make such an
issue of that. I always tell them, Indian women are meant to have
hips. It's like Indian men have skinny legs. You know?" At the store,
garments are arranged according to size ("so that a lady is not
frustrated going through things that are not her size"), where the M
(Medium) and the L (Large)are greatest in volume, "and our S (Small)
rack is only over after a fashion show," adds Wendell, cheekily. He's
sure about his consumer, and what he offers to her. "I have the Indian
woman in mind. All ages, shapes and sizes. And I don't want to do
garments that she'll wear only once. I want them to become a part of
her life, personality, extend your mind. I can do a nice lehenga, it's
so easy, but I'd rather not do it, because that's a
once-in-your-lifetime moment. I'd rather do clothes where we become
part of your everyday life, your style..."
Which fits like a glove with Wendell's celebrated minimalism. As he
sips the coconut water extracted from his orchard in Colvale (where
there are a dozen coconut trees), we do breakfast that's amidst
nature, with sweet, sleepy Napoleon by my side for company. Wendell
doesn't mince words about setting trailblazing trends. "When I started
out, you never saw a cotton garment hanging in a high-fashion
boutique, it just wasn't done. Fashion was meant to be silk and
emboidery, always. I think, if we have clothes based in cotton today,
I started it. A lot of young designers saw that they could make
clothing out of cotton and they're continuing the legacy, which is
great." It's like with the classic men's short kurta we're only too
familiar with today, something that Wendell's wearing in black ("I
have a wardrobe that's 60 per cent white, and 40 per cent black").
"They called me India's guru of minimalism in 1993, I'll tell you why!
When I made this short kurti for men, I remember I wanted to make it
because I loved the Indian kurta, but it was too long and it would get
stuck in the door. So I wanted to make it shorter, a kurta with the
practicality of a western shirt. I ripped out the kurta completely,
and said 'I don't want the buttons', 'I don't want the cuff', 'I don't
want the starchy collars'. I took it apart like Coco Chanel, who said
take it apart until you see it there, just the real design lurking. It
just showed up - the fabric, the colour - beautifully." He wears the
black one while travelling and during the monsoons "so it doesn't get
dirty" and the white one otherwise, teaming it up with jeans/pants
when he steps outside, and a lungi at home.
He adds, "I wish I'd patented it, because I see it everywhere now. Be
it Christian Dior, or Stella McCartney, or the Janpath streets, or
Ibiza, you'll see that kurta there!" Green tea figures in Goa too,
albeit here, it's drunk from a special urn, and Wendell's parameters
for the good life are discussed. "I remember I dropped 1,000 euros on
a pair of shoes in Paris and my mother was horrified, 'How can you
spend Rs. 60,000 on shoes?'. And I told her, 'It's because you're
looking at them like shoes, I think they're a serious work of art'."
He smiles and elaborates, "I have a fetish list - books, music, art,
shoes, in that order - to spend on. I don't like fiction much. I might
read it once in two years. I also read six books at a time. I'm a
Gemini, I'm multi-faceted. I love all music - I can listen to African
beating drums, people chanting in temples... I think if we didn't
talk too much and listened to music, it would be a better form of
communication. I tend to go for art that's abstract and lets me
search, art which has defined brushstrokes or detailing. I like to get
lost in it. I have the largest collection of Goan contemporary art. I
don't buy art for value, as an 'investment'- that's for bankers and
lawyers. I buy art to live with, to surround myself with, to live with
everyday." Jewellery was one of Wendell's things too, up until a few
years ago, before he decided to replace them with tattoos, that is.
(Zig zag lightning strikes on the ring finger and the neck.)
Wendell views the three schools of Indian fashion thus, counting them
off on his fingers, "There's royal India, all about the maharajahs,
which Raghuvendra Rathore and Tarun Tahiliani and Rohit Bal do, very
rich and very nice. Then there's hippy kitsch gone Bollywood, which is
what Manish and Malini do. And then there's me - based on those very
abstract Indian concepts, about yoga and calmness and Ayurveda. I
think my garments are a reflection of that, because they've been
created in that spirit," - a space he comfortably inhabits, his Goan
soul perfectly centred. "Indian garments, from Vedic times, never had
a stitch, you know. They were all drapes, lungis and saris, which were
later held together by knots or small nadas when the Mughals came. I
like to do that, I hardly put zippers on my clothes, I like to drape,
and things are generally held together with knots or nadas."
Wear-ability and practicality loom large on his fashion horizon, "I am
more Gandhian in that sense. I don't want the clothes I make to wear
you. You wear the clothes. I would hate it if a lady walked into the
room and someone said, 'What a beautiful dress', instead of 'What a
beautiful lady'. You know? I'd rather her style, mind and body take
centrestage, and I don't mind the garment being subtle, so that she
comes out, her personality, rather than the dress. And if she likes
what she's wearing, if she's comfortable, she's going to shine."
Wendell admits to feeling "a complete emotion" at the start of the
creative process, and he shares with us the story of Visionaire, a
special project, infinitely close to his heart. "I remember it as my
best collection to date, made for the visually challenged. Professor
Acharya, who used to teach in a school for the blind in Worli
approached me, and he asked me to do some clothes. He told me how it's
such a disaster for the visually challenged getting dressed in the
morning, saying, 'What you all do in 10 minutes and gain so much
confidence out of, we do in 45 minutes'. And I thought that's a
terrible thing. Now I'd heard about colour therapy and all - how red
energises you, blue calms you down - we tried it all, and there was no
response. Finally, we put down the text in Braille, found out through
research and several try-outs how they can only recognise the text
that fits in the ball of their fingers. So, we wrote sentences in
Braille in that size, using French knots or beads, and finally they
could read in six months. That this was a 'white shirt, size M, by
Wendell Rodricks'. It was a path-breaking innovation in the world and
it worked out only because I looked at it seriously as a project, and
with emotion."
The assistants at his store are particularly taken by one of Wendell's
peculiar (not to mention handy) talents - reading sizes in one glance.
Says Wendell, "I learnt very early, in LA, under the person who would
cut Marilyn Monroe's clothes, how to read peoples' sizes. He would
just say, 'Read that woman's measurements. Learn to train your eye'.
And believe me, my eye is so tuned today, I can tell your measurements
just by looking at you. In the store, I write them down for reference
when people walk in. And many times, my assistant is absolutely
shocked, because I've written down the exact measurements already."
Down to the half-inch, if you must. Wendell also listens hard to
requests, making new trends as he hears about them, "Like when we
started out, no one wanted necklines beyond seven inches, and now the
clients are always like 'Make it lower', because cleavage is suddenly
in again."
Another trick of the trade is a photographic memory, "I'll meet you 20
years from now, and I could tell you what you were wearing, what
earrings, how many bootis there were on your top. Like, you know how
you had to draw that arterial system of the frog and all in school? It
was in my memory and I just had to draw from there, it was always
perfect, I would always get full marks. I would sometimes draw extra
ones for my friends and they would attach the supplements to their
answer sheets. The other day, I was talking to my Aunt Veronica, and
she was so amazed, because I was telling her how I remember her
wedding dress so clearly, down to the last detail of the flower
bouquet." His trained eyes are forever performing impromptu makeovers,
Wendell confesses, post Delhi breakfast, a few hours before his flight
back home, "I think Anne Hollander wrote a book, Seeing through
Clothes, about how you can read a person by the clothes and it's true.
I like to people-watch in airports and all, but I'm not critical. I
have my definite views, like 'Oh my God! I would never wear that'. But
I'm also looking at the clothes with that sense of praticality behind
it. I'm always thinking 'Oh, if that shirt was slightly
longer/shorter, he'd be more comfortable', or how that button could
shift there, et cetera, et cetera. I'm always redesigning. I go to
church in Goa and I can't concentrate, because I'm always redesigining
in my head. I've redesigned everyone's clothes, like someone's wearing
a polyster frock with a bow on the bum!"I sense an involuntary shudder
down his spine, "I've redesigned the priest's garments also. My mind
is constantly thinking about this, because my eyes are constantly
watching..."
Wendell cuts his clothes himself even today, definitely the
complicated ones. "I think most designers are very good with their
pens and sketches. But give them scissors and I'm quite sure they'll
be at sea. I'm sure I can beat any designer in this country in this
competition. I mean, I'll win it. I like to cut because I think it's
also about spinning the garment mathematically in my head. And I like
throwing myself challenges like, 'Can I make a gown out of
one-and-a-half metres of fabric?'. And we did, we made a nice low
back, tie-knot evening gown." He tells us about his unique style of
cutting that uses Indian geometry, "I do it the way Indian tailors
think. For many years, I'd been trained in that western way of cutting
and making clothes, and I would look at Indian tailors and wonder what
the hell they were doing. Because they weren't doing those patterns
and all like we'd been taught in LA or Paris, where we would
calculate, one-fourth shoulder, then divide it by two, some
mathematical jargon, which was just, I mean, I was always bad at math!
Then I cracked the code by observing the darzis here. They divide the
whole body into grids."
He picks up a napkin and demonstrates, "For a simple kurta, I need an
edge for the shoulder and I know it's 15-and-a-half. Then I know the
neck is about three-and-a-half inches, so I get the neck-point, which
is the most important one, and then there's a slope to the shoulder.
So how much is that and how do I get the chest point? I know the
shoulder to the apex is 10 inches, and an average person has a 36 or
38 inch bust... and I'm cutting in squares. I could give you a class
right now and you could cut your own kurta in half-an-hour, I'm not
kidding. Observing Indian tailors and realising what they were marking
was a moment for me. I would just stand there, staring, knowing I had
to crack this. This was after I'd come back, technically as a trained
designer from the west. This observation went on from 1988 to almost
the time when I went to Goa. Because I realised I didn't have a
masterji and I had to cut the clothes myself. So till about 1994, I
was perfecting this. How long is that? You do the math, I'm bad!" he
laughs.
Ask him if designers are judged on pret and an international market,
and Wendell takes the mickey out of that question. "In India? You're
judged by which Bollywood filmstar is wearing your clothes. That's it.
(laughs). It's a nation that's obsessed with film, glamour and
fashion. It is honestly that. Until Rekha bought my clothes or Malaika
started wearing them or Bipasha wore them, until I got that
endorsement from Bollywood, I was not important. At least, for the
general public. Just yesterday, I was talking to Rocky S and Vikram
Phadnis on the flight, and they were telling me about how, and we
can't take names here, but how Shilpa Shetty has these racks of
clothes coming from designers, big names. Which I don't think is a bad
thing, though. I mean, I'm sure they get bags from Louis Vuitton to
flaunt, right? So, it's a marketing thing." Bombay, for Wendell, is
fun from a distance, or as he puts it, words pushed between a laughing
fit, "When I need an adrenaline high, I don't need to bungee jump, I
go to Bombay." He talks about his Goan life some more, "I have lots of
friends - Amitav Ghosh, Theodore Misquita, IAS officers - who're
completely away from the fashion world, and amused by it all.
Actually, I have these parties sometimes, which are so entertaining,
because they're the only places in the world where big time
industrialists, who're naturally so bored, meet these young hot
models." And a fashionista's digression, "I don't know what they're
doing in those offices, these industrialist types, worried about the
budget and whatnot and dressed like penguins. Why are they in these
Ralph Lauren ties? They should be in Indian kurtas and feel more
comfortable and look more stylish, you know."
The "isolation and distance" is something he relishes; watching the
raindrops plonk into the swimming pool, feeding Tiger a slice of
cheese ("My Goa. The real Goa. Which tourists most often miss out
on"), you know Wendell's home. "I'm away from the visual bombardment.
I don't watch television, I don't read newspapers. There's an asana I
do in yoga, where you can stop the sound, and that's what I do. I
avoid the Page 3 parties. As a result of which, I can focus on my work
and my clothes, which is what I really want to do. I make time to
enjoy life, I wake up early, go for walks, I leave the office before
sunset so I can appreciate it - I'm not this person who can be stuck
in a tubelit office forever. The best things are really free,
especially in Goa, where you can just go look at the stars and the
skies at night, admire a river. We have a small boat, and we take it
out for a spin sometimes. I read books, I enjoy good biographies, and
I like to read about fashion. I'm reading Caroline Weber's Queen of
Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. It's a
dress-by-dress psychological account, how clothes became so much a
part of her persona, how she started out as a 13-year-old bride and
ended up at the guillotine years later."
There's a memento of a memory burnt onto his brain, from when Wendell
was four, growing up, overwhlemed by those bels of cloth, "The tailor
went out for lunch and I was fiddling with the machine and by mistake,
I put my nail under the needle and took a stitch. I instantly knew
there was something wrong, because well, firstly, I was in shock and
then, there was this pool of blood and I was crying, saying, 'I'm
stuck in this machine'. Everyone panicked, but my dad, thankfully, had
the presence of mind to reverse the machine, because it was that
hand-driven thing, and he managed to gently pull my hand out from
underneath it. So, I feel like I've been tied to that machine,
really..."
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First appeared in First City Magazine, New Delhi, Oct 2008.
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