The age-old skills of Indian embellishers have inspired the latest collection from Melbourne designer Dhini Pararajasingham. Kate McDonald spoke to her about technique versus concept.
When she first launched her high-end pret a porter label Dhini in Australia in 2006, Dhini Pararajasingham was immediately lauded for the quality of her tailoring. A focus of her graduating year at RMIT University, backed up by an internship with the master tailors at Boudicca in London, Pararajasingham has concentrated on the highest quality in cut, form and shape for her subsequent collections.
This year, however, she’s taken a slightly different tack. Inspired by a trip to India and some eye-opening work with the remarkably skilled embellishers the country has produced for centuries, for her Influence AW10 collection for autumn/winter 2010, Pararajasingham has included some unusual embellishments in her new range.
These include elaborately beaded circular cut-outs using oxy-metal and glass beads, along with injections of laser-cut fabrics from Swiss couture textile mill Jakob Schlaepfer.
“India does incredible embellishments,” she says. “I went and saw factories that do work for Armani and Louis Vuitton and Balmain – they are quite used to that level of beadwork.
“For the first time, my collection was driven by the Indian techniques rather than me coming up with a concept and making the collection work around the concept. The collection has followed from techniques available in India – it was a much more organic and free-flowing process than usual.”
Detailed embellishments are nothing new to the Melbourne designer, however. Her spring/summer 09/10 collection, titled New World Order, included a quite spectacular drum major’s jacket, inspired by one of her private clients, who wore a vintage marching band jacket to one of Pararajasingham’s shows.
The jacket included sequinned fabrics, finely engraved military buttons and the expensive but remarkably beautiful ribbons made by Mokuba of Japan.
“It took me a while to source the military buttons,” she says. “I eventually got them through an agent who imports them from France. They are perfect military replicas and are nice and heavy and detailed.”
Mokuba is well known for its designer trims, which Pararajasingham sources through local agent Ken Lord of Designer Trims/Mokuba, the company’s local agent. “They only use the highest quality materials and it is their techniques and the composition of their fibres that make them superior compared to replicas from China,” she says.
“Even their ribbons are fine weave structures and have interesting weave techniques within the ribbon work. It’s hard to find good enough ribbon elsewhere.”
Cost is an issue when it comes to both top-drawer trimmings and the Australian market, she says. The Schlaepfer fabrics can wholesale from $300 to $800 a metre – far beyond the range of most Australian buyers – so she has used small amounts of fabric as injection pieces. And Mokuba doesn’t come cheap either. “They are very expensive but it is worth it when you see the quality,” she says.
For the autumn/winter collection, Pararajasingham admits that she pushed her Indian suppliers hard.
“It took them a while to perfect it because they hadn’t done anything like it before. We cut massive holes in the garment and they have embellished around the holes with beads. It’s quite hard for them as it has to keep its shape – they had to do lots of trials and techniques to make it stable in that circular shape.
“I did make it hard for them, but we all make it hard if we want to do something new and different.”