The Kingdom of Love

At the dawn of the contemporary Indian Fashion Scene...there were just a handful of designers. The first ones who came out of the fancy design institute - NIFT. Most of them went on to be stalwarts of the nascent industry.

JJ Valaya is one of them. He is someone who built his empire of fashion on excess and rich fabrics, designs which were inspired by royalty and the wealth of Indian kings. Wearing his outfits became a matter of pride for more brides and grooms at weddings as they wanted to project the image of being rich. JJ soon became stuff of legends as ge went deeper into his roots to fish out inspirations and some long lost traditions of making outfits and styles.

And then came a series of interesting designs which perhaps fell flat on the ground. Men in skirts. By no means I love a gorgeous hunk in a kilt but not the long flowy skirts which are so reminscent of the ghagra traditions. It began from a season and then went on to a repetitive nature of JJ's clothes. Now each of his shows are not complete without any of them..what began as a fantasy Kingdom of Love is today the crazy design guy who makes outfits for God knows who!

What I really want to know is who buys these weird outfits? Why does he make them? If you will notice JJ no longer shows up in any fashion magazine or is hardly ever talked about as a prominent designer.

What the hell happened?