The Silent Rebel

pHow to be a man these days? And how to explore and express that through dress? These are core themes that preoccupy Delhi-based menswear designer Ujjawal Dubey whose label, Antar-Agni (meaning andlsquo;the fire withinandrsquo;), has gained increasing attention since its launch in 2014 at Lakme's Gen Next platform. andldquo;Change is so beautiful. Iandrsquo;m interested in how the man can live the two extremes. The sensitive, the warrior; both extremes in all senses,andrdquo; says Dubey./p pandnbsp;/p pWith his wife Saumya, Dubey works out of a studio in the capitalandrsquo;s industrial hub, Noida. Directly drawn in marker pen onto the windows behind their desk space, sketches of designs floating against the blue sky beyond hint at an intense creative process. On one wallandmdash;what the couple laughingly call Dubeyandrsquo;s andlsquo;scribblesandrsquo;andmdash;frames forming a collage of raw, visceral, disquieting energy. On the other side, quotes by Yohji Yamamoto sit next to still images of Quentin Tarantinoandrsquo;s Reservoir Dogs. These are all clues to the idea of dressing embodied in Dubeyandrsquo;s designs. A kind of cloaked Keanu Reeves in the Matrix warrior meets the traditional dress of India and Afghanistan, comprising layered jackets, kurtas, turbans, and loose-fitting pants./p pandnbsp;/p pSoft-spoken Dubey grew up in Gorakhpur in eastern Uttar Pradesh, close to the border with Nepal. As a boy, he was introverted to the point that he found it difficult to speak when in a group. Design became his way of fighting through this confidence crisis and expressing himself. For a young man in search of codes of masculinity, it was in Hollywoodandrsquo;s portrayals of warriors that he found escape, and a ray of light shone onto a whole world he would later create through fashion. He left home to study at NIFT, Kolkata and went on a six-month exchange program with the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2009. Here, he recalls building a hitherto unthought-of level of confidence and began to explore graphic design as a medium of expression. After graduation, he worked for Shantanu andamp; Nikhil, helping realise the technical fabrication for sportswear as part of their five-year strategic partnership with Adidas./p pandnbsp;/p pWhen it came to creating his first collection, it was the film adaptation of Khaled Hosseiniandrsquo;s The Kite Runner (2007) that struck a particular chord. For the collection, Dubey's silhouettes and shapes strongly recalled the traditional dress of Afghani men, a source of inspiration that has become one of the bedrocks of his work./p pandnbsp;/p p style="text-align: center;"/p p style="text-align: center;"andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp; andnbsp;emUjjawal Dubey of Antar-Agni/em/p pandnbsp;/p pThese are the traditional inspirations infused with Dubeyandrsquo;s near-obsessive fascination with the dynamics of asymmetry expressed through the convergence of diagonal lines and draping. And it is almost surely a result of his interest in architecture and structural engineering. andldquo;I like lines, the proper division of space. I love bridges and am fascinated by pillars and how they hold the whole bridge. Iandrsquo;m fascinated by the division of space; if a line is not proper even by a quarter of an inch, it bothers me,andrdquo; he says. This fascination results in a distinctive design signature that splices the proportions of the body into triangular shapes, with sharp angles used to create elegant proportions./p pandnbsp;/p pRecently Dubey applied for and won entry into the first round of the regional Asian chapter of the coveted International Woolmark Prize. He looks forward to the possibilities of developing khadi blended with merino wool as part of his creative process. For his line, he often uses a heavy variety of emkhadi/em that he developed himself in collaboration with a master weaver in Sambhar Lake, Rajasthan,70kms from Jaipur. He doesn't justify using khadi for any reason other than what he simply says is the andlsquo;characterandrsquo; of the cloth, its unapologetic texture, and the way the coarsest, zero-count emkhadi /emworks when tailored into a coat./p pandnbsp;/p pHis mandeacute;tier, he says, are non-conformist suits and tuxedos that bridge the gap between formal and occasion wear. Formal wear limits the idea of menandrsquo;s dress to Western-style suits and occasion wear is all about the sherwani. Dubey hopes to insert a different vision of what either of these can mean with his elegant interpretations of traditional dress, given an understated contemporary spin through cut and detailing. He says his clothes are essentially androgynous, and around third of Antar Agniandrsquo;s clients are women who began by buying menandrsquo;s pieces from the collections. Functional and fluid, offbeat and edgy, sleek and controlled, Antar Agniandrsquo;s designs offer up a distinctive form of anti-fashion in the Indian context./p pandnbsp;/p pstrongMore On andgt;andgt; a href="http://www.luxpresso.com/style/fashion" target="_blank"Fashion/a/strong/p

from Luxpresso http://www.luxpresso.com/news-style/an-interview-with-ujjawal-dubey-of-antar-agni/17032504
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