After being in the industry for quite a while now, one of India’s finest couturiers, Siddartha Tytler opens up about his first ever bridal couture collection titled ‘Shan-Shui’ at the FDCI India Couture Week 2022.
Showcasing the extraordinary and taking our sartorial choices a notch above with every season is all that the FDCI India Couture Week aims at. Putting their best fashion foot forward, all the 13 couturiers have carved themselves a niche for the upcoming wedding season with their exquisite collections. Speaking of adding the extra to the ordinary, Siddartha Tytler, one of the finest couturiers in the industry marked his advent into the world of couture at the FDCI India Couture Week 2022.
Since firsts are always a bit special, Siddartha Tytler made sure to mark a debut by taking an unusual route towards his bridal collection. The collection titled ‘Shan-Shui’ was nowhere near the typical bridal scene, instead, the Tytler army was all in for experimentation this year. Inspired by the Chinese landscape paintings, from the designs to the set, every bit of the show painted an unusual picture in our minds. From women’s wear filled to the brim with cocktail gowns to the plush embroideries and silhouettes in the men’s wear collection, all of this rightly spells out the grand advent of Tytler in the couture clan.
Furthermore, to give you a peep into Siddartha Tytler and his notion behind the collection, we decided to have an exclusive tête-á-tête with him and gain some insight regarding the same.
Siddartha Tytler on making a debut into the couture clan
The brand has always done couture-worthy objects, but what led you to create a full collection dedicated to it?
Ever since I started 21 years ago I’ve always been fascinated with couture and then I started experimenting with pret and got into it, but my fundamentals and my DNA have couture, high-end luxury, and everything fabulous written in it. So this season when FDCI invited me to be showcasing at Couture week for the first time, it was just so exciting that it just made me go back to who I am.
What are the distinguishing aspects of this collection from your usual pieces?
This season we overdramatised with what we do best, we played with a lot of volumes, and a lot of structural bodies, and of course, we kept to our key elements of crystals, sequins, feathers, pleating, frills, and corsetry, but we exaggerated. We made it much bigger than it is, much grander, more couture, more royal so we just added a lot of drama elements to our collection this season.
Any hero pieces from the collection that you would like to talk about?
From the womenswear there is this one jacket we made, a sleeveless jacket with these crystal bows, we have about 25 gigantic bows made of crystals making this whole Japanese armour. It just came out absolutely beautiful, it opened the show for us. Then we had these big opera jackets made of nylon, which is the windcheater fabric and it was about 25-30 meter ghera on each jacket, it just elevated the show with these two pieces alone. In the menswear, we did our sherwanis, but we did these oriental motifs with crystal chains and they just came out spectacular, it was something very new to me and it just worked out beautifully.
What is the inspiration behind choosing this intriguing concept of Shan-Shui?
I have always been inspired by the orient, I’ve always been inspired by the far east. It’s always been in my system and I have done collections before, from 2008 to now we’ve done about 6-7 collections. This time we kept it a lot cleaner, Shan-Shui is the art portraying landscapes, rivers, beautiful houses, and even the clouds, so we just picked up these elements. And Dragons has always been a staple in my collections throughout time, so we just streamlined it, polished it, and showcased it. It was truly fruitful.
What according to you is the 2022 bride looking for? Both for her big day and other occasions.
Brides today love to be traditional on their big day. Our introductory bridal line is traditional, but always with that contemporary twist, maybe in a dupatta, in a choli, or maybe in a flap on the lehenga or a kamarbandh. So, they’re just looking for that little element that makes them stand out and look a little different. As far as the other events around the wedding, they want to be funky, they want to have fun and be comfortable so outfits are lighter, embellished, sparkly, more glam and the blouses are always statement because in today’s day and age it’s about Instagram, a lot of people take selfies with the brides so the blouse is key more than the bottom. So, it’s always lighter, more fun and easy and obviously you can pair it off later in the future, like your choli with a pair of jeans or your skirt with a nice buttoned down shirt and style it up with a little bit of Chanel pearls, it always looks beautiful.
