Supriya Lele is one of those designers who’ve got into the rhythm of showing one season, and doing a lookbook next. Last time, she sent out something of a spectacular at the Barbican—a bold underlining of the delineation of her brief, draped sexy co-ordinates which succeed in blurring the distinctions between clothes, swimwear and lingerie. That was the Supriya Lele woman sorted out with a wardrobe for summer. For fall, the lookbook season, it was off to talk to the designer where she works.
“I would say this season feels a lot more refined and elevated,” she said, by way of greeting. “And there are a lot more simpler things happening. Which I really love. It’s sort of finding pleasure in simplicity—small things like color, or just cut.” ‘Simple’ may not perhaps be the term that immediately springs to mind when you’re looking at a pair of cutaway black leather underpants, tightly belted at the waist, being worn with a black leather shirt with a pie-frill collar. Yet body-exposure is a positive choice that Lele and her sister generation of young female designers have normalized, and she has an audience for it.
Lele’s photos evoke something of the locality—an ex-pharmacy, with a busy Bermondsey street glimpsed outside and a corner pub over the road. Upstairs in a ramshackle converted office building is Lele’s studio. It’s one snapshot of the young creativity that springs up through the London cracks, as it has always done—a factor which doesn’t detract from the quality of what she’s doing.
“I started thinking about what I was actually wearing,” Lele said. “Every day, I’ve been wearing this baseball coat and slim jeans. And so we started by working into this idea with a really nice kind of leather piece.” It turned out as an over-the-head leather hoodie. The slim jeans part became fine-gauge leggings. “Then obviously, we started exploring the draping that I love to do so much, which I think has now become sort of more of a signature of mine. I wanted to create fabrics that looked wet, almost iridescent.”
One dress—a white paisley lace, hand-foiled with pearlized paint ever so subtly underlined Lele’s Indian heritage. Others in gold, or cobalt blue, looked like photographic gels. Up close, on this appointment, it was also possible to see the quality of the fine gold and silver knitwear pieces Lele has been working on. Skimpy, but with fashion substance.
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