The house of JM Couture has created a pioneer position for itself amongst fashion aficionados. Bringing luxurious detailed clothing and design experiments, it has changed the Indian men’s festive wear for good. The designer also highlights the work and importance of the original craftspeople of any brand – the ‘karigars’.
An eye for edgy tailoring with the careful curation of a classy style, the designs of Jatin Malik is synonymous with the impeccable and modish menswear of 21st century. His eponymous brand ‘Jatin Malik Couture’ has always been dedicated to the modern sensibilities of luxurious bespoke tailoring for the Indian men. Having been already part of the renowned, ‘Milan Fashion Week’ in 2019, Jatin has rightfully mastered the correct fusion of Indian as well as international silhouettes.
“The idea is to do something which has never been done in Wedding Couture and create something beautiful and functional in the process,” says Jatin Malik. Coming up with a whole new concept for his Fall 2020 collection– “Fractal”, he beautifully presents two of the most striking qualities of his design aesthetics- infinite patterns and beautiful flow where for the first time in menswear couture handpainted ensembles will be recreated for wedding ones. The ace-designer further explains, “A fractal is a kind of pattern that we observe often in nature and in art. My fascination for patterns of different scales and repetition is not unknown and that’s what drove me towards this art form for my new collection.”
Not only that, Malik has also experimented with 3D embroidery and 3D elements in festive-wear for this bespoke collection. Fractal’ can be seen bringing the concept of ‘fashion-tech’ wearables with a fusion of quaint and eccentric moods, fulfilling the vivacious Indian minds. Bringing out a fine blend between technology and hand-crafted elements, he explains, “It’s therapeutic amalgamating techniques of such different genres like Hand Paint with 3D embroideries. We create a Hand Paint base on the fabric and then we do surface texturing on that base to give the uniform look. These two stages normally require 10-15 days time depending upon the intricacy of the paint technique and colour chosen. Once it’s settled, we use 3D brass elements and embroidery techniques to highlight the whole piece by placement embroidery or all over the basis sketch we are working on. So, all in all, a good 25-30 days period is required to complete one single piece made out this amalgamation.”
His collections always run a whole gamut of indo-western looks which means there’s a little something for every fashion lover. He knows the correct balance of incorporating flavours of both eastern and western fashion. Reinvention remains the core and backbone of Jatin Malik Couture, “We created a separate section in our store for hand-painted pieces with surface texturing and 3D embroidery patterns because of the response we have received over the last 2 years. So it’s a business necessity in this era of social media, you need to constantly experiment and re-invent and categories like wedding couture where nothing much has been done in almost 100 years, it becomes even more important,” the Indian couturier tells. His ensembles cater to the new fashion enthusiasts hiding within men who aren’t afraid to experiment, especially with festive wear. From using all-natural dyes to eco-friendly, organic fabrics for production, and zero waste the brand is reviving the wedding wear category, ensuring that the grooms today are able to proactively endorse eco-couture without compromising on style, “We have always been an avid advocate of buying classic, hand made couture pieces which actually provides value to your wardrobe. We are of the firm belief that feeling of wearing classic quality pieces can never be replaced.”
Jatin Malik Couture, Milan Fashion Week’19
The ace Indian designer gives a complete lowdown on his upcoming Fall 2020 collection- “Fractal” and the means of Indian Fashion amid the pandemic.
Decoding ‘Fractal’
“A fractal is a pattern that the law of nature repeats at different scales. The repetition that occurs in a fractal is called “self-similarity”. Another way to think of this is, when you zoom in on a small part of a fractal pattern, it looks just like the whole thing. Fractals are exciting, not only for their mathematical or conceptual representation but also for the fact that you can visualise and see an infinite world inside them —and it’s beautiful! There is vastness and depth here. There are moments and growth here. A strange symmetry on a different scale. A love affair between infinite patterns. Existence of a different world inside that symmetry, that’s ‘Fractal’ for me!”
Executing ‘Fractal’
“We started working on this collection in January so the inspiration, concept and mood boards and sketches were already in place before the lockdown. The execution was a challenge because the inspiration behind this collection is pretty unusual and there was a lot of back and forth at the time of its making because of the lockdown. All the zoom calls and virtual meetings with the team was not easy as we were discussing every minute detail over calls but somehow we managed to get a major chunk of heavily embroidered pieces “khaka” done at our homes and the rest of it got completed the moment we got the permission to open our factory.”
Changes in the Indian Fashion Industry
“We as brands should never take our ‘karigars‘ for granted as they are the most important factor in making or breaking a brand. It’s of utmost importance that all the brands appreciate and celebrate the craftsmen and their ability to make beautiful pieces a lot more. Most importantly the process should be transparent. The process should be transparent and the description of the embroidery techniques and people involved should be mentioned on a tag other than the usual price tags put on the articles. As consumers, people should definitely enquire about the effort and time that goes behind making a product so that they know the actual worth. This will help clients too in assessing if they are buying authentic hand made and hand embroidered pieces and it’s actual worth.”
Designer Jatin Malik
