Published: 31st March 2017
Upcycle, upstage, upmarket: the year's new fashion mantra.
The Mumbai-based design label Wandering Whites has been slowly catching up to its name, with its designer traversing the world for her raw materials. The lady behind it, Gaury Pathare, earned a spot among the country’s top nascent upcycling designers following her showcase at the Lakmé Fashion week Summer/Resort ’17. Her first collection of sorts — which includes an asymmetrical mesh of crimp wires nestling lava stones resembling a rose, copper-plated AC pipes replicating transverse sound waves and a brass statement neckpiece made from an engine cylinder gasket — is an organic extension of her design sensibilities to find order amid chaos. This collection includes eight looks that feature body harnesses, and statement rings besides the neckpieces. “Each element of my jewellery tells a story about its origins and its maker and hence I use these designs in such a way, so as not to change their original form,” says Gaury. “That way, the final design can never be scripted from the beginning and is all by chance,” she adds, with a laugh, hinting at the title of her collection, Serendipity. Formerly an editorial fashion photographer, the 38-year-old says that designing jewellery began with her hobby of collecting stones during her travels. “I had collected so many of them (mostly semi-precious) that I felt that their story needed to be told and that is when I decided to start making jewellery.”