Tuesday, March 27, 2001
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Setting Dubai on fire 

VIDYA DESHPANDE  
For a label that is just five years old, Ms Monisha Bajaj has come a long way. The label has become a name to reckon with not only on the Indian fashion scene but also with the Indian community abroad. Ms Bajaj, who set up her own design studio and label in 1996 after working in New York for a while, is now all set to capture the market in Dubai. She is one of the two Indian designers (Mr Wendell Rodericks from Goa is the other designer.) who have been invited to participated in the Dubai Fashion Week, held between March 19 and 25 to coincide with the Dubai Shopping Festival.

"This is the first time for me as far as Dubai is concerned," says Ms Bajaj, though some of her clothes have found their way to Dubai. She will be unveiling her summer collection during the Dubai Fashion Week instead of having a show in Delhi or Mumbai.

For the Dubai show. Ms Bajaj will be taking a trousseau collection of lehengas all done in summer fabrics like organza and a few in light silk.

"The embroidery is minimum, instead of being all over the lehenga," says Ms Bajaj, keeping in mind the hot climate. "This is the first time I am doing a trousseau collection for summer," she says.

Her regular summer line for 2001 will have a large collection of Indo-western clothes, short kurtas with straight pants or long skirts and dupattas. Here too, Ms Bajaj has played around with the fabric and embroidery, keeping it to a minimum for summer. The kurtas largely have pin tucks or same coloured thread embroidery.

This year, she will have three summer lines. The Dori collection will have mainly Indo-Western clothes with the uses of doris or strings, instead of embroidery. The second line will have chikankari work on the same Indo-Westerns and saris. Here, Ms Bajaj has used tone-on-tone embroidery with some shading to give the clothes a bandani look. And the third will be her signature Monisha Bajaj collection using organza, gorgette, and mul-mull on layered kurtas with churidars, or Indo-Western clothes.

"The colours for this summer are lime, orange, mauve, indigo. They are brighter and are more lively instead of the usual natural colours. Only the chikankari collection will have pastel shades as this work looks good on such colours," she says.

Though most of Ms Bajaj's summer collection is already sold out to her regular clients and she is hoping to make a killing at Dubai, you may just get lucky with some clothes. The summer line starts at Rs 7,000.

Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

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