... AND THE BRIDAL WEEK BEGINS

Today was the day before our first showing and the beginning of India Bridal Week which always demands a day of fittings! Unfortunately I had little-to-no sleep the night before with a bout of insomnia or perhaps it was excitement for the week ahead! With an early morning start, the odds were certainly against my sleepy self and to make things worse I woke up to what seemed like nothing short of torrential rains!

 

Frantically calling for a taxi to no avail, I pulled out my trusty Burberry gum boots and braved the storm, bags full of the day's necessities in hand, to hunt for a rickshaw! Soaking wet, damn sleepy and just barely on time due to traffic and flooding, I arrived @ Grand Hyatt for fittings. As unfortunate as the weather seemed to be and with constant thoughts of where the homeless were sleeping last night, I reassured myself with my father's words playing in my head 'the rains are always a sign of a blessing.'

 

Blessing in hand, I faced the day! The fittings started TWO HOURS LATE! By this stage, the models were into their gossip session and with almost 50 per cent being former or current Miss India contestants, it was incredibly jaw dropping to hear stories of who had done what in terms of surgery, how they got a placement in the pageant, plight post-Miss India etc. With two hours insatiably filled, our work finally began.

 

For those of you who don't know what fittings are all about, here's a little 101, a little beginners' crash course. Every fashion week in India holds fittings before the week begins in order to determine which model will be best suited for which garments and then which order that model and garment will be placed for the sequence of the showing. We models are split into two "pools" (A and B) and given a schedule of which shows our pool will be a part of that week.

 

I am in pool 'A' this week with some amazing girls I've always looked up to like Nethra Raghuraman, Shruti Agarwal, Dipti Gujral and Alecia Raut. Once in our pool, we stand in a semi circle in front of the designer and choreographer as clothes are allocated to us to wear. We proceed to the changing rooms where we collectively try on our garments with helpers from the designers' team. The models are generally friendly and help each other too! Then we all come back to our semi circle, fully dressed in our garments and our heels (that we mostly need to provide ourself, unless the designers specifically want their own footwear). We must always carry black, nude, silver and gold heels to every single sho and /fitting, along with nude undergarments, shorts, silicones etc as the choreographer begins to arrange our sequence. This is usually determined by the color and texture of the garment. The top models always open and close the show and designers tend to give the more experienced models the best outfits.

 

Once our sequence is determined, we get each garment tagged with our names and then get photographed wearing it. Then this process is repeated per designer! Each designer is usually given a two-hour time slot to do their fittings! It is a very long and tiring process. In this process the models must always have their hair tied up and no make-up on. Pool 'A' only had three fittings today, ending with Tarun Tahiliani. We had to stand according to our height and being one of the tallest of the two groups, I was fitted first and managed to leave early! Tarun has a big collection so pool A and B and an additional pool C were added for his show! I am sooo, soO pleased with my beautiful outfit and the fact that I'm opening the first show of the first designer of India Bridal Week... not to mention one of my faves! The outfit is so verrrry heavy and I've come back home with bruises on my hips and arms from the sheer weight of the garment! It is bridal week after all :-) Tomorrow we have only one show and that is the magnificence of Tarun Tahiliani! You can't imagine how spectacular this is going to be!!! Wish me luck!!!