butterfly effect

It is strange how my dear little friend from office has been waiting for me to write another post on this blog. He said that blog is a way to vent out your feeling and emotions. All right so where should I begin? I feel like celebrating the fact that hot and scarlet pink is quite in this season. So are yellows and turquoises! More reasons for me to celebrate is the fact that fashion designer Erdem, in Balmain fashion week showcased a collection with butterfly effect on his collection. I am glad because the collection resembles my tattoo.
Well celebrations and jokes apart, in Balmain a lot of designers have done the winged effect to their fall 2008 clothes. Christophe Decarnin did bat embellished sheath and Erin Fetherston’s collection had a lot of translucent tails. To some butterfly is just a beautiful inset and to some freedom. I guess this is one of the reasons why I chose to have it as my tattoo.
So here is to fashion that preaches freedom or to fashion with butterflies. Eitherways is fine with me!

Wind

It is the wind that makes you wise,
Which way to go, it decides,
Sway and sway… how far it frays,
You can fly with it or brave against it,
But still you have to face it pray,
For it is the wind that makes you wise,
Nothing else lasts,
No dream and no disguise,
No pretence and no mask,
The wind takes it all away.

The long dusty road...

Through the window when I look,
There is a wind waiting to welcome me,
But when I walk into the wind,
Everything around me stops.
Is it because I am fearless now?
Is it because I have nothing more to lose?
Is it because there eh no prayer anymore?
Or is it because I am not the same mandymore?
There is no one to answer these,
There is no Bible to preach,
There is a life that I have to lead,
A smile to fake… a film to make,
I have a long dusty road to take
A long dusty road to take…

Missing Isabella

The first time I saw her, I thought she was the most weirdly dressed lady I had ever come across. A feather on the hat I had heard, but a whole bird… she had to be crazy. Yes, she was but she was a crazy genius. And now the people who knew her as the mother of fashion will always remember her. Isabella Blow is dead! When VB called to tell me this called me early morning to tell me this I could not react. The first thing that came to my mind is that I will not be seeing the feathers anymore. But I was growing to like them... the feathers. Isabella or Issi as her friends and me called her loved hats. She thought that Indian Fashion was a sack of potatoes.
Here is her last conversation with me in first person. I still have the lipstick she gave me and said, “You will remember me with this.” Now I want to tell her that I would have remembered her any which way:
Her Mission: I have been asked to do a documentary for Al-Jazeera, which became English speaking last week. And I might be doing a chat show for them or maybe something very fascinating. Also this show might give me a platform for my charity work for AIDS.
I have been talking to Rupert about this whole project that I want to start as a fight against AIDS. So I have been talking to people in Red Cross. And we will start off a big project in March next year. And I have a whole list of Bollywood stars that I am personally going to meet to convince to be a part of this project. And I want to involve the Bollywood stars because they are well know to be uncharitable, which I disapprove of. I have chalked down a list of 16 stars and Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Preity Zinta are a part of it. In LA we have Liz Taylor working with us and so we want at least one movie star to work for us against the disease. At the end of the day you do need a face to a cause. Though I should also make it clear that I am interested in using people who happen to be celebrities. And they will not be a part of the useless auctions and a part of a press conference. They might be sent to a camp in some country and asked to do six days work which includes everything… even cleaning the pots. This is what I call charity.
Love for Liz: I am not coming for Liz Hurley’s wedding because I am not invited and neither do I fancy her. I don’t approve of her selling her wedding to Hello Magazine. I don’t think she needs to do that, but I think that a celebrity can go too far when fame gets in your head. I think all that money that she has spent for the coverage of her wedding, if she spends it for a cause, it will be worth it. I have been at her fashion TV show and I realised that she know nothing about fashion. Liz is a phenomenon. She wore a dress with safety pins on it and she made millions with that safety-pin dress. She was nothing before that dress. She is a very bad actress. She is a beautiful woman, but there are many beautiful women in the world. Look at Aishwarya Rai; she is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
A feather in the hat: My first memory of a hat is when I was eight years old and I tried on a giant pink hat of my mother’s. There’s a photograph of me and I look as happy as anything to be wearing it. I have some 40 hats in my collection, but they’re all exquisite. One of my hats is like a castle that stands up on my head and singer Michael Jackson wanted to buy that from me for $2000. But said forget it! Then once David Beckham invited me to see his game in Old Trafford, I wore his face on my head with a diamond at his side. His mother said, ‘what do you think you are doing wearing my son on your head?’ and of course Posh was livid, she said, ‘that my husband you’re wearing on your head.’ I really can’t bear anyone wearing my hats. The only thing that I have not tried till now is a turban. But I am too ugly to wear a turban.
Indian Fashion… a potato sack: When we talk about Indian fashion I see a whole lot of potato sacks. The designers have to get better cuts and silhouettes to hit the international stage. The Indian designers forget that their roots are here and they should first be inspired by India then the West. But I think designer like Varun Bahl is going to change the face of Indian fashion. You have to have a knack for fashion and not many in India have it. Not even those who have been in the industry for over 15 years.
India, my new butterfly: Also I want to buy land in India and make a butterfly house. In the morning the wings will open out and at night the wings will close in. Bizarre, eh?

Footprints
I was walking by the sea shore,leaving my footprints behind,contended as I walked,I never realised that my footprints werewashed away by the sea.Bewildered! I looked behind,asked God," Why this happen to me tonight?"He smiled at me,like a father to his child,said," My girl, satisfaction is a state of mind,for those who have achieved alot in life.But you, have to learn more to leaveyour FOOTPRINTS BEHIND..." (Mandvi)

The next season...

Koffee with Karan is back, so is KBC, so is Karamchand (and also the carrot)… all in their dutiya or tritiya season. But except for the green mug (which indecently Karan thinks will be the cause of envy for many) and the a little modifications of the set nothing else has changed. Neither his guest… not SRK for sure. Maybe we never realize but we all have our defaults, huh! KBC has Shah Rukh Khan. So what… the set is the same, the theme song is the same, the amount of money is the same and so is the chair in which Mr Bachchan used to sit. At least guys change his chair. No but there is a major difference here… dear friend Karan Johar (again a default) decided to out rightly leave his creative skills behind to make a wardrobe for SRK for KBC, which actually looks like a spoof of Don and KANK. I say spoof because SRK does not look like himself in Karan’s renditions of his characters. There also has been a lot of in and out of KBC. Like the log kiya jaye is out and freeze it is in, quizzing is out and nach-gana is in and gifting a dialogue from a movie is, out gifting a Tag Heuer (worth Rs. 2.3 lakhs) is in. Wonder if the folk sitting in Milan and Paris are taking the note of the ‘in’s and ‘out’s. Lisa Kogan once said, “Even the worst haircut eventually grows out.” These are just… I will leave it to your imaginative minds to decide.

I am still learning or am I?

Though it is strange how many things in my wardrobe did not change. Like the colour pink… it was the new black then and I thanked my stars for liking it. And how can I forget the pair of jeans I wore… well some called it old fashion because it did not show my ass cheeks and some called it just too tight because it did not look like I had taken a pair double my waist and had forgotten to buy the belt… so it might fall off any minute. For me it was just right. It still is no matter how much my ex-boyfriend cribbed about it with fashion designer Varun Bahl. Ok if you are beginning to think that NIFT was all about me worrying about my clothes and not studying… then you are absolutely right. I mean there were hardly any subjects to study there. I first had to get a hang of the warp and weft yarns of the fabrics, then know the count of the yarn and simply differentiate between chiffon and georgette. It took me 6 months to master the art of doing that last task. This was just one subject called textile science. I had a subject called illustration… and more that the sketches we drew I remember our teacher. He almost had no hair on his head and loads of dandruff. Wonder how no hair dandruff comes!!! Well, I also can’t forget the way he used to ask, ‘why are the boys missing from the class?’ So for a long time we girl were under the presumption that he is Gay. But later we found out that he is happy and married. Wonder whether Karan Johar would vouch for the statement!
Apart from all this fun I and my batch had really worked hard in many areas. Like when we had to make a shirt. I made a shirt for my dad. Well that is a part of your course, so that you know the technique of making a garment. The only thing I did not do in the shirt was put buttons. No my dad is not like Salman Khan, but I just thought that the tailor would be able to earn a little money by putting button on the shirt I made. Dad still has the shirt and it still looks quite wearable. We also did very serious stuff like cheated under the nose of one of our professors, who almost dozed off in the middle of the exam. So much for cheating… it wasn’t fun cheating so easily. And my hair gelled friend said, ‘I haven’t faced a tougher exam than this.’ No wonder he had to ask his brother to ask the airline to hire him! So for me NIFT was the special zoo that not only made me scribble some notes here and there in my diary, but also make me fashion educated. Just to say that I came out of NIFT as a fashion illiterate with a degree.
Not to be continued from here on… my NIFT days are over and so should be the cribbing. Today is Gudda’s birthday and I am going to wish him all the best. I am talking about fashion designer Rohit Bal. I don’t know how old he turns today and what he intends to do for his birthday. But if I am a part of his party, you will know exactly what he did and what the others did. The washing of fashion will begin now. Whether it will be good or bad… I leave it to the fashion czars. Amen.

first draft...

My father always called the fashion designers, ‘darzees with style.’ In fact when I was going to NIFT on the first day he said he felt safe sending me to NIFT… “It is like a girl’s college you see!” Well could blame dad for that comment, I was introduced to the word GAY there in NIFT. Gay was no more about being happy. It was about being homosexual. Hmmm… we all learn eventually. Least I did!
Most of the people who were doing FDCT (Fashion designing in clothing and technology) course with me at NIFT wanted to be a fashion designer after completing the course. The other minor community wanted to be merchandisers, I wanted to be a fashion journalist and another foolish friend of mine wanted to be a model. What on earth was he doing in NIFT… well trying his luck on understanding fashion so that he can sport it well (just a guess)! I always told him it is not worth it, but he insisted that he would get noticed here. Well, he did get noticed when he had water dripping from his hair. We advised hair gel to him. He also got noticed when he slipped while walking the ramp for the NIFT fest fashion show. Well, but we still did not let him deter from his aim of becoming a model. Today he is a steward in some airlines. Well I guess he is modeling there as well. Just hope he doesn’t slip there. That will cost him a lot of money and his job, eh?
That’s about my batch. I should also introduce you to other NIFTians. There were many other courses. But it did not matter what course u did their, if you were in simple pair of jeans and Tee, then you had to be from PLUTO. I was when I entered NIFT. But on my first day of NIFT I saw a guy, whom I immediately christened murgi. Well, he had a Mohawk hairdo, had a tattoo on his neck, walked more delicately than me and had a Harley Davidson wallet. You know that chain wallet that HD came out with a few decades ago. Now that murgi is a stylist in a fashion magazine, but nothing much has changed with him. He was my welcome note to NIFT. When I went back home, my clothes looked drab. So it was time for some invention… Mandymore style. The first thing I changed was my shoelace. From a brown on my brown sneakers it became red on brown and green too.
To be continued….

Inquisitive Scorpios...

This is not one of those," Once upon a time…" type of story. In fact it seems like yesterday when I got my Internet connection and the first thing I wanted to check on net was my daily horoscope. A trait you will find in most of the inquisitive Scorpios. I am not VERY SUPERSTITIOUS about things, though I wait for another person to pass by when a cat crosses the road. But that is usual I am sure. I remember when I was a kid and we had gone to see a fair and this local astrologer saw me and said," oh! She is the future Priyanka Gandhi", I though that was the name of some great actress or a beauty pageant winner. Though later on when I got to know who she is I really felt sorry for my I.Q. Even till recent times I feel amazed by the powers of the stars. Around two years back I got very interested in stones and got my self one made according to my birth-chart. It was for self-satisfaction. It did work because I really started feeling satisfied in whatever I did. Even if my college projects were half pending I still felt satisfied. After that there seemed to be stone everywhere. I saw Mr. Amitabh Bacchan's ads and saw two blue Sapphire stone rings in his finger, and after sometime another one was added in his adjacent finger. Now! That made me feel unsatisfied and I knew the effect of the stone I was wearing was diminishing off. I felt even I needed some stone that could enhance my power and make me famous. So I made a little visit to my local astrologer and instead of telling me which stone to wear he told me that one of the line in my hand tell him that I don't have my breakfast everyday. I was amazed. How could he know? He surely is great in his field. He told me to rectify this and only then he would tell me about the stone. So from next day onwards I very religiously started having my breakfast. I did so for about a month and looked at the line he had pointed out the other day, it looked just the same. I gained three things from this experience, one never trust all that a stranger tells you, two the habit of eating my breakfast everyday and three a few more kgs of weight. Long time back some one had told me that my name was not suitable for me, I should have a name which starts with an "A" so my mother started calling me Aana at home. That happens to be my fifth nickname. Recently, a neurologist told me that my name is very powerful only if I drop my surname. Like an obedient child I started using my name Mandvi without Sharma, though I liked calling it in the James Bond style- Sharma… Mandvi Sharma. But that is not all he was also a feng shui expert so he told me that the direction of my computer table is not right. So it was repositioned in such a way that it seemed to me that I had dropped something behind the table and was still waiting to pick it up. He also placed a crystal globe on this table and asked me to spin it three times a day. Some days back I forgot to spin it and I am sure the globe missed me too because I could feel it's anger. Reason- whenever I used to switch my computer on the Internet never used to come. It surely is a powerful globe. Next what kept me busy were my lucky colors. This astrologer told me that I should not wear any red colored clothes. Wow! This was the cream of the cake. Red out of all the colors. This happens to be my favorite color. Almost every third cloth in my wardrobe is red. So what am I suppose to do now dye them all orange or blue which are suppose to be my lucky colors. And so the story of my swimming in the pond of superficial things carried on. Today, I realized that more than all of this what is more important is the faith within. So I thought I will share this story of the fate with you all and write it without anything superficial around me. Believe me I am not writing this today because it happens to be a lucky day for me or because I am wearing my lucky orange pajamas or because an astrologer predicted that I would win a story-writing contest this year.

the first stitch...

Oscar Wilde once said, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” So does that mean that the fashion that comes out every six months is as ugly as any other?
Well, fashion for me is not just about clothes. It is about the attitude you have, the hairstyle you sport and even the tagline you have on your G-Talk. When I was first introduced to fashion in NIFT, Delhi, I realised that I was just looking at this F-word through a very small keyhole. There I met fashion junkies! Pink streaked hair, really low waist denims, brown shoes with red laces (I did this one too) and bags made out of old torn jeans. They form a different cult altogether when they study fashion. When I was not a part of this cult I used to call them the ‘scissor n stitch’ cult. When I became a part of it, it became ‘yards n yarn’ cult. That’s because I loved the whole textiles of the fabrics and how they were made. But enough of technical crap!
Fashion students, in the beginning are like Columbus. They don’t need direction, neither did he! But when they reach the spotlight they forget Columbus. Anyways my whole aim of opening this blog is to let you be close to my world. Yes I got into this world because I chose to… it is fun, famished, flourishing, foolish and fantabulous!