Finally, there is reason to celebrate for the Wendell Rodricks label. Designer Amit Hansraj has been appointed as its creative head. Hansraj’s first collection for the label is ready and we have the first pictures, and it looks truly beautiful.
There has been little good news since Wendell Rodricks passed in February 2020. The following month the world was shut down by the Covid pandemic. Rodricks’ partner Jerome Marrel hurriedly sold off the label and all its archives to Abhishek Aggarwal of Purple Style Labs for a pittance, as the chief designer had passed, by December that year. In a few months, its lead designer and Rodricks’ favourite student (other than Masaba Gupta) Schulen Fernandes had quit too. Aggarwal launched some WR stores across India but soon enough, the clothes began to look like cheap imitations instead of fashion pieces.
Wendell Rodricks’ long-in-waiting museum too gets a delayed opening date every six months, making us wonder whether it will open at all.
In November 2023, designer Amit Aggarwal was invited to make a capsule collection, but it had very little of Wendell Rodricks’ spirit, and looked rushed. And this week, PSL will announce Hansraj as the new creative head of the Wendell Rodricks label.
"I had been in touch with Nivesh Pandey and Abhinav Agrawal of PSL for a few years and they had been looking for a creative head. I had even suggested some names to them, but they came back to me and asked me to do it instead. They thought I spoke about Wendell so passionately, I admired his craft," Hansraj tells me. Hansraj has his own label, a gorgeous independent young label called Inca that was launched in 2020, and one that he intends to keep going. He used to stock at Pernia’s Pop-up Shop, a mass and very successful chain of boutiques and e-tailer owned by PSL. "I met them and understood what they wanted of me, and they accepted what I could bring to the table. I wanted to keep Wendell’s mood alive, but reimagine what he would do in 2024," Hansraj offers.
Hansraj, 46, says Rodricks was a huge inspiration to him, even though they had never met. "I remember as a young child still in denial of my homosexuality, going through an issue of Femina where Madhu Sapre wore a bra-top made of seashells. That was so bold and liberating for me, not in a titillating way but I think as a connection. It would later become my moodboard. Inca is also resort and ready-to-wear," he recalls. During the 30th year of Ensemble, Hansraj’s previous job, he found some archives that came from Rodricks long association with the boutique. "His Braille collection’s press release, and, oh my god, his line sheets. I’ve never seen any designer, big or small, make line sheets the way Wendell did – they were vivid, filled with hand drawn sketches and swatches of the dress," Hansraj says.
Then he went through all of Rodricks’ archives, now owned by PSL. These were shoot images, show music, show videos, commercial work he had done as a stylist, and a beautiful sketch he had made for journalist Meher Castelino’s book.
"I also spoke to a few people who knew him well and for long," Hansraj says. "I didn’t want to copy-paste Wendell, but draw from him." Hansraj gleaned from the insights offered that Wendell Rodricks believed in going back to his roots and taking inspiration from his everyday environment.
"He did not forcefully try to be out of the box, he was just about his space, his identity and his environment. I don’t know how he chose to live in Goa (when he was born in Bombay) decades ago, when it would take five days to send a courier and there was no easy access to dyers. He made beautiful clothes with very little at his disposal. He had none of the hustle and lobbying that Bombay and Delhi designers did," Hansraj says.
The new collection is filled with Wendell’s soul. It has flat fabrics, twisted and turned, circular silhouettes and solid colours. " I've left the corners untouched, and I’ve used his favourite chiffons and satins in everything," Hansraj says. Even the photographs are styled in the way Rodricks would shoot his images. There are 25 styles, and the first lot comprises 500 garments in all. The collection is priced between Rs 12,000 and Rs 48,000. There will be two collections in one year and will be sold at all Pernia’s physical stores as well as online.
"When Wendell made clothes, couture was understood as heavily embellished wedding wear. But Wendell made very intelligent clothes, there were a lot of couture-quality details," Hansraj says.
"The most delightful thing for me is that there is a dhobi close to where I live, in Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi. I see this lady who gives her Wendell Rodricks tunic to him regularly to get ironed. This just makes me so happy," Hansraj says.