Designer Vino Supraja is winning awards for an unusual fashion formula

Hindustan Times

a day ago

'Every step in my career has been unplanned,' laughs fashion designer Vino Supraja, 45, 'but it has prepared me for exactly where I am today.'
Her journey is testament to the power of serendipity, she adds.
How else could a girl who 'spoke almost no English', growing up in the small temple town of Vandavasi in Tamil Nadu, end up winning a trailblazer award and delivering a speech on India's culture of sustainability, at the British House of Commons?
'I've grown to accept that when I'm willing to let go, be dismantled and reassembled, good things happen to me,' she says.
Supraja started out, for instance, with a degree in architecture from Chennai. It was there that she met and fell in love with her husband 'and best friend' Deepak Renganathan, a marketing vice-president with a real-estate company.
Eager to explore some of the new technology emerging in the early 2000s, she then completed a course in animation. This led to her first full-time job, as a TV presenter and radio jockey with Jaya TV.
At this point, in 2011, her husband was offered a position in China, and she and their son Hriday (then six and now a medical student) moved with him. 'I spent hours browsing through courses there, trying to find something I could do,' Supraja says.
That's when she stumbled upon a listing for a course in fashion design at the Shanghai outpost of the International Fashion Academy, Paris. 'This and a business course were the only two listings with websites in English, so I don't think I had much of a choice,' she says, laughing.
Suddenly, it came together: her love of storytelling, her love of building, her passion for the arts. Here was a discipline where she could combine all three.
Her graduate collection in 2014, inspired by the book The Kite Runner, made it to the Shanghai Fashion Week, where she won the Golden Laureate award. Her collections have since featured at the Brooklyn Fashion Week (2016), New York Fashion Week (2018), and London Fashion Week (2023), with designs increasingly rooted in Tamil culture.
The instantly recognisable costumes of the ancient Tamil folk art form of Therukoothu (literally, Street Theatre) are reborn as ensembles. The iconic Bhavani jamakkalam stripes turn up in contemporary vibrancy, as accents on clutches and handbags.
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If it seems like Supraja is weaving her stories in fresh and surprising ways, it's partly because she grew up without the frames of reference of most of the urbanised world, she says.
Folk lore took the place of fairy tales in her home. Her family had no TV set. Her father, the physician Dr Audikesavalu, opened up his house to patients from nearby villages that included Purisai, a hub of Therukoothu performers. The local temple hosted a range of folk artists too. 'These productions were not perfect. They were crude, raw and unpolished... which made them beautiful in their own way,' Supraja says.
Her mother, Vimala Audikesavalu, ran a local school and was known for her collection of handloom saris, which she washed, starched and sun-dried every weekend, in a ritual that served as a bonding session for mother and daughter (and gave Supraja an early appreciation for and understanding of heirloom garments, traditional weaves and sustainable fashion).
Syncretism was everywhere. The local church hosted Bharatnatyam classes. The Therukoothu performers let children from the neighbourhood watch and sometimes help with makeup backstage.
'My childhood was a patchwork of simple experiences but these fragments shaped me into who I am today,' she says.
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Given the opportunity to present a collection at London Fashion Week 2023, she decided to give Therukoothu 'the platform it deserves'. Her designs captured the depth and drama of the art form in flowy silhouettes. She showcased the art form itself too, through a one-minute performance by a Therukoothu artiste.
Her latest collection is born of her travels to Bhavani in Erode district, to study the GI-tagged jamakkalam weave. The colourful stripes were traditionally used to make cotton rugs. She reimagines them as couture because 'if they can look like Gucci stripes, they deserve to sit alongside them too'.
'Having had my share of the limelight, I now find myself thinking: Who can I share this moment with?' Supraja says.
Her eponymous label uses natural fibres and pigments. She offers to buy items back from customers after 18 months, in exchange for purchase points, and has plans to upcycle these items too.
In her speech at the House of Commons, she advocated for garment workers' rights. Without the right kind of intervention, their livelihoods — which have tended to be embodiments of sustainability and yet have been tenuous and marginalised — will become even more challenging, she pointed out, 'as we encourage people to buy less'.
She was awarded the Global Sustainable Fashion Trailblazer prize at the House of Commons (awarded jointly by the World Tamil Organization and the UK government) partly for her unusual approach to fashion, and for her work to promote undervalued and underestimated traditional crafts.
Supraja's sustainability efforts have also yielded a self-published book (aimed at helping people navigate questions of consumerism), a podcast and a theatrical production.
The designer, who now lives in Dubai, is looking forward to her next showcase at London Fashion Week, in September. And to more sustainability outreach work, particularly with children.
'Kids will ask if it's okay to buy new clothes for their birthday,' she smiles. 'They grasp the wastefulness of buying a new outfit to celebrate a friend's birthday.' Her hope is that, with enough of these conversations, they will grow into adults who treasure their heirloom garments, avoid fast fashion, and never buy into a microtrend.