Travel With Me: My First Interaction With A FASHION DESIGNER

Before I start with my topic let me warn you this is a LOOONG post.

Almost a week back I met Anuj Sharma. Well it wasn't a one to one interaction. He had come to our institute for a guest lecture cum work shop.

Anuj Sharma... He is a Fashion Designer. Does it end at that... NO.

Well let me introduce you to Anuj and his work.

He has done 6 Lakme Fashion Week (LFW). After which he stopped. Because he felt there is more to fashion than the ramp. He wanted to reach to people. And thats where it all started. The 6th LFW gave birth to BUTTON MASALA, his well known and highly creative collection.

About Button Masala:

It is the most easy way to make hundreds of outfits from a single piece of fabric.

Its easy to make and easy to wear.

Anyone can make it, age no bar if you know the concept.

Its cost friendly. No tailoring charges. No heavy production or manufacturing charges.

If you look at the bigger picture then its even environment friendly too.

Basically its creativity at its best. A single piece of fabric can be a dress. Which can then be a skirt or may be pants. Can be a cape or a shrug. And then can also be a bag. And after all this you can also make a nice pair of footwear out of it for winters (obviously to be worn at home). How can one miss the accessories. Yes you can make nice neck pieces and even belts with this concept. What else women need.

On a second thought husbands and dads will be more happy with this concept, right?

When initially he came up with the concept it looked like this:

Over here on a fabric buttons have been sewed. And its been held together with two long straps full of loops.

This garment can be worn in several ways, want to know how...keep watching.

And it can go on and on. I think you can wear it in thousand different ways.

Here is the glimpse of BUTTON MASALA- LFW Spring Summer collection

Even his pants are of Button Masala concept.

Then came the improved button masala. Which is the most amazing thing I have come across in clothes. All you need is an easy fabric, buttons and rubber bands. Yup thats all. Let your needles and threads take some rest.

The good things is that you can swap the buttons and use different articles too.

Apart from Button Masala, he has also come up with

Pao-Bhaji Masala

Kids wear

Smirnoff for men

Accessories

And Masala Chai, buttons took a back seat and the chai (tea) cups came into action...

Then came TT balls,

It will help you to float. A swimsuit-dress for the non swimmers.

And he also tried using some tin lids and metal parts.

Masala Chai concept has no boundaries. It easily can be used for interiors too.
Doesn't this cup garland look FABULOUS... Add strings of tiny bulbs and a fairy tale decor is ready.

I would had said this is a mind blowing INVENTION... but as per Anuj, nothing is an invention if its source is Earth. Whatever is said to be an invention is nothing but doing a thing in a different manner. Thats it.

So all the bloggers who keep complaining that so and so stole my content or my thoughts and ideas. Give it a rest and relax. Well I made peace with my qualms.

Anyways... Apart from being a Fashion Designer Anuj Sharma, is down-to-earth and a humble person ( I got that from the way he presents himself). The fact that he willingly wishes to share his Button Masala concept with everyone speaks a lot about him. I mean who does that. Everyone wants to cash in every single idea or concept.

He is a writer. He was kind enough to share few of his poems with us. They were beautiful. They spoke of real and of hidden human feelings and human nature.

Apart from fashion concepts, he even talked about spiritual and philosophical concepts. Personally, I really loved it. For the first time ever Fashion concept was explained with a spiritual touch. The one thing during his lecture stuck with me was: Create designs with good intent because only that will help you become a good designer. Only thinking about the monetary rewards won't make your designs famous and/or creative in the real sense. Think beyond that.

There were many other things he talked about like love, death, life... I won't be talking about them because the post is already way to long.

Anuj claims that he is a lazy person but his laziness has helped him in many ways. Best example is BUTTON MASALA.

His laziness hasn't stopped him from acquiring good knowledge about all the factors involved in his field of work. He is a lecturer in National Institute of Design, Gujarat. He has taken his formal FD education from the same institute.

He has good understanding about craftsmanship too. He asked us to focus more on analyzing the fabric's texture and fall and start making the garment rather than getting your ideas on the paper first and then trying to force it on the fabric. Illustrations won't help much but working directly with fabrics will. He stated a simple fact but it was the most helpful one.

Anuj Sharma also gets invited for guest lectures across the globe. He has also spoke at TEDx.

He even has won an award for best innovative designer.

After hearing all this who will say being lazy is bad.

But as Anuj said : Its not bad to be lazy until and unless you know the importance of commitment.
Fair enough.

Being a very simple and approachable person it was easy to connect with him. His attitude helped in breaking the student-teacher barrier. Due to which the Question-Answer session was fun (people who had to face the gibes and ridicule wouldn't say the same though).

Moving on to the workshop:

In this session he taught us how to actually make garments with help of Button Masala.

These are the outfits made by me. Instead of buttons I had used counters (used in board games and card games) and used dupattas.

My first attempt of using the BUTTON MASALA concept