On a balmy Saturday evening, designer duo Amrita Khanna and Gursy Singh unveiled their summer collection for Lovebirds in their first physical show after the pandemic. The designer duo walked down memory lane and captured the mood and nostalgia of the quintessential Indian Summer. From wavy stripes to polka dots, to colourful geometric patterns, their collection had everything suitable to standout this summer. In a exclusive chat with The Times Of India, Amrita Khanna and Gursy Singh talk about their new collection, their plans for expansions and their personal style. Here's an excerpt.
Tell us about this beautiful collection
At Lovebirds, sartorial directions and inspirations have often greeted us at unusual places. We’ve often looked outside and around for creative stimulus but this time around, it was a journey inwards. For our latest Summer collection, we are taking a walk down the memory lane to capture the mood and nostalgia of the quintessential 'Indian Summer’ — from the quiet lazy afternoons, bougainvillaeas in full bloom, to long drives spent admiring sunkissed landscapes, and balmy evenings spent under the Amaltas trees. A glass of refreshing nimbu paani, in a quaint hill station perfectly encapsulated summer for us.
Shapes, structures, clean lines, and forms have been an intrinsic part of Lovebird’s aesthetic and design process. Staying true to our ethos,we embarked on a creative journey where ripples in the rivers was transformed into a wavy stripe, summer landscapes are handmade with crayons and printed digitally, and pebbles and rocks from the river banks of Himachal are given a graphic twist, and an abstract touch to summer flowers. The collection is a nostalgic homage to all things summer, spoken in an abstract language, keeping in mind its wearability factor.
Lovebirds' silhouettes are always relaxed and easy, but this time we also saw some sexy pully tops and bell-bottoms made of knitwear that were form-fitting. Is the brand shifting its focus to Gen Zs?
We have always believed in comfort, timelessness and inclusivity. We feel design in any form needs to provide a solution and an emotion, defining a distinct personality for the user ( wearer ) For many years, we have made high-quality clothes with relaxed tailoring, free from trends, age and sizes. We are still known as a brand for easy, effortless silhouettes that transient from day to evening.
As a brand, we have always emphasised in character more than body shapes and forms. This time, we wanted to challenge our belief and own up to our varied body shapes and sizes and join the body positivity movement. We brought soft comfortable knitwears that accentuates our beautiful bodies, cropped fitted tops with high waisted loose and tall trousers to look powerful as well as feminine. GenZ definitely has a fresher perspective, and a more confident outlook to issues of genders and shapes, and Lovebirds welcome that.
We saw a lot of polka dots and they are an ageless trend. What do you guys think makes polka dots a never-dying trend.
Dots are classic and resonates deeply with our brand ethos of timelessness and trend-less clothing. In fact, geometry has always been a fundamental inspiration as well as a starting point for the brand since the inception of the brand. As far as we remember, we started our brand with a dot and line. That dot and that line might have come in different forms and patterns, but they have always stayed in the brand's universe. There was a time when we were the only brand that was recognised for dots in the country. We did take a break for a few seasons from dots, but our clients always came back for them.
What's the business plan for Lovebirds in 2022? At a time when every big designer houses are partnering with Reliance or Aditya Birla Group, do you guys mind having such partnerships in the near future?
We have marked 2022 as a year of joy for the brand, a year we will dedicate to human relationships and partnerships. From a stand-alone summer presentation, we would soon be opening another retail store in Mumbai, moving on to introducing a line of Lovebirds products and more exciting collaborations, we feel we will be benchmarking the brand at a newer scale this year.
Lovebirds is all about togetherness and companionship. And we are always open to partnerships in future. To answer this question, we’d say - Never say Never.
Tell us about your own personal style
Amrita is a mix of classic, fun and comfortable when it comes to her personal style. She would surprise anyone with her everyday looks which would be so distinctly styled and put together and extremely original. She doesn’t really follow enough trends but remains very relevant and chic in her dressing style. She also believes in power dressing, she would mostly be found dressed in loose man-ly trousers, shirts and co-ord sets. Gursi has a more simpler, norm core and anti fits style in his dressing. Not experimenting much with colour and cuts, he oscillates between Navys, blacks, Ivory and more Scandinavian colours.
