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NIKASHA TAWADEY]
FOREWORD
The search for an internship was a tedious task. The options were to intern
with a designer, a retail giant or an export house. Having had previous experiences
with the latter two I decided to pick the designer category. It was a gruesome task to
apply for an internship. Most designers were hoping to train and hire or just had
conducted training sessions for the year so there were limited openings. I, with great
difficulty landed my internship with the designer Nikasha Tawadey. She is a relatively
new designer; Bombay based, and has been in the industry for five years. Before
joining here I had started elsewhere as a merchandiser and completely despised the
environment. Hence my search continued. I wanted to intern with a designer who
would be participating in the fashion week and whose design sensibility would be
different from mine as I wanted my mind to open up and seek different horizons. I
chanced upon Nikasha Tawadey went for the interview and in two days I got a call
asking me to join as soon as possible. Hence on the 24th of July commenced the
journey of my internship.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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INTRODUCTION
The organization I interned with was Pacific Brands. Pacific Brands belongs to
the designer Nikasha Tawadey. Nikasha is a Mumbai based designer. She has a small
production unit in Santa Cruz west in Mumbai and a store in Bandra.
Nikasha`s collection embodies a vintage feel with a rhapsody of colours
coming alive through the interplay of fabrics and prints, simple silhouettes with
classic cuts, interlaced with trimmings and embroidery, eye for detail is an
explanation for all her collections in a nut shell. Her designs exude femineity whether
it is in terms of silhouettes, colors, fabrics or prints.
Nikashas designs are an Indo western blend. The silhouettes are
inspired from the days of the Maharajas. The anarkalis, the straight fit pyjamas, the
flaired angarakhas etc. The garments are mostly Suits, tunics, kaftans, saris and
lehenga choli. Indian garments with a slight touch of the west.
Her design flair reflects her years of working with Sabyasachi Mukherji. The
use of light silks, chiffons, georgettes, brocades, muls in combination with turquoise,
coral, glass, wooden beads all interlaced with lace, satin, ribbon, splashed with a hint
of embroidery make every garment look chic .The color palette comprises of red,
haldi(yellow),coral, beige, cream, white, sea green and mauve.
Detailing is done in terms of Indian prints in colors of antique gold, copper
and whites, pleats, piping, tucks, ruching and embroidery.
Some key features of her designs are juxtaposing of the most unthinkable
color combinations, the dhoti pants, frills in garments made from crushed cotton and
latkans (doll and gotta).
Besides garments designing of accessories such as neck pieces, stoles, head
gears belts and bags are also done.
My internship with Nikasha Tawadey was for a period of 3 months. I was
appointed various projects such as orders, printing, dyeing, silhouette development,
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DESIGNERS PROFILE
Nikasha Tawadey after completing her education in Delhi with Honors in
Psychology, Nikasha set out to study psychoanalysis at the Tavistock School in
Mumbai, but her creative urges drew her towards fashion designing. During this
course, she dabbled into fashion designing and year 2003 saw the well known
designers Abu Jani & Sandeep Khosla approach her to retail her line at Selfridges
(London). The year 2004 saw the birth of her label Nikasha. Today Nikasha is the
only Indian designer retailing her exclusive Spring Summer collection at Macy's ( San
Francisco ) under her brand name Nikasha.
Nikasha has been among the lucky few designers to have had a chance to dress
the then reigning tennis beauty queen Anna Kournikova She has also been
instrumental in designing and styling for the Lifestyle campaign. Actress Preity Zinta
has sported some of her chic ensembles in the movie Lakshya. From designing for
Anup Jalota`s music video to the Coke commercial shot with top Pakistani stars; and
her participation at the Singapore Fashion Week in 2005, are just some of highlights
that add to her illustrious career graph.
TYPE OF ORGANISATION
The design house Nikasha is at a very nascent stage. She has had marked
achievements in just five years of being in the industry. The design studio is based in
Santa Cruz West (Mumbai). The showroom is in Bandra. The strength of the unit is 25
persons.There is a cabin for the designers and accountant and there are two galas. One
for the embroiders and another for the tailors.
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SEPADFRE
MITRCEIUM
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DAMTEISD
ENAISTRNE
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TYPES OF BUYERS
Besides personal clients as mentioned above there is an elaborate list of
buyers.
Buyers list: Ogaan (Mumbai)
Ensemble (Delhi/Mumbai),
Zoya (Mumbai)
Aza (Mumbai),
Kalika (Bangalore)
Rudraksh (Pune)
Carma (Delhi)
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DEPARTMENTS
There is no specific task allotment of task for the design team based on
department divisions as it is a small production unit. The department segregation
applies only the tailors and embroiders else everyone who is done with their delegated
task pitches in other tasks.
The overview of a generalized department division is:
o
o
o
o
o
Design Department
Production Department
Dyeing
Printing
Finishing and Packing
Design team
The design team comprises of the designer Nikasha Tawadey and 3 assistant
designers. Designing is done for the fashion week, for the store in Bandra as well as
for exhibitions. The garments comprise of saris in chiffon, georgette and cotton with
gotta work and printing done. Tunics with pre-ruched churidars, salwaars, cowl pants
and dhoti pants. Kaftans, pleated tunics and kucchi tops. Blouses and lehengas.
Production Department
These assistant designers irrespective of their designation have a lot more
ground to cover as it is small production unit. They also function as merchandisers,
production heads for their respective orders and also are responsible for the
companys correspondence with clients and buyers. The assistant designers also
handle clients and buyers.
The fabrics sourced are mostly utilized for accessory making. Trims used are
gotta strips, brocade borders, sequins, buttons, zippers, elastics, threads, needles etc.
These are sourced from a place called pyaidhuni in south Mumbai.
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Dyeing
Dyeing is outsourced. Sampling of colors is done by assistant designers.
Crushing of fabrics and dyeing is done in Mahim.
Printing
Printing is also outsourced. Printing is done on chiffons, georgettes, silk and
cotton. Traditional motifs are printed mostly in antique gold, fresh gold, copper and
white.
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PROJECT UNDERTAKEN
Rudraksh
o Design development sheets
o Fabric sourcing
o Embellishment sourcing
o Design modifications
o Production
Carma
o Procurement of fabric
o Production
Store Production
o Designing of garments
o Fabric procurement
o Production
o Accessories
Sahachari Exhibition
o Designing of garments
o Silhouette development
o Fabric procurement
o Production
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Sampling of printing
Developing placement prints
Sampling of embroidery
Silhouette development
Production
Accessory procurement
Fittings
Backstage assistance
Look book
RUDRAKSH
Rudraksh is a multi brand store in Pune. I had to carry out the order sent by
this store for 18 garments based on the autumn/ winter 09.
The tricky part of completing orders is that there are multiple orders
taking place parallel. So not only done line balancing have to be managed but
also the time frame and vacancies as per dead lines of other orders.
Completing an order means starting from scratch. You have to know the
pieces that you are suppose to prepare. Based on which you understand the
work that goes into them.
Some pieces have embroidery so would take longer to finish whereas others
might just have stitching details.
The aspect of availability of fabric, dyeing, printing cannot be overlooked.
The patterns to some might be more complex than others.
In some designs fabrics without dying cannot go for printing hence some
pieces have a lot more preprocessing than others.
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Keeping all these factors in mind one has to decide to give pieces to
various departments without creating bottle necks in production. You have to
put all your resources to optimum use.
This order had a 4th September as a deadline. I had one month to complete the
order.
So basic steps for production would be in the following sequence:
Design development sheets
Procuring fabric
Consumption per design of fabric
Dyeing fabric
Printing of fabric
Embroidery of fabric
Cutting and stitching
Checking the fall and fit
Finishing
Ironing and tagging
Packing
First I had to make design development sheets for all the designs and
give a copy for masterji to follow and also refer to the fabric consumption
sheet in order to sort out all the fabrics, measure them based on the
consumption for every design; add color swatches and send them for dying.
Before sending out the fabric one has to make a challan for the dyers stating
the consumption of fabric and putting swatches of the fabric, hence one can
follow up when the stock is returned from dying. We write the consumption
and name of the order and color to be dyed on the side of the fabric with our
names as different order pieces go together for dying so segregation becomes
easier later.
This initially did not seem very crucial but over time one starts valuing
even such rules such as making minor notes because in the long run it is a time
saver and avoids mismanagement.
Once the fabric comes from dyeing I created packets of fabrics used in
a design and made design wise packets. Then, I gave the pieces that did not
require embroidery but had the same pattern for cutting and a couple of pieces
for embroidery and sent the pieces for printing as per requirement. One must
keep a track of all pieces at all times as they are prone to be misplaced or get
used in another order by chance. Minor errors add to expenses in terms of time
and hence in turn money.
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CARMA
Carma is a multi brand store in Delhi. Since the clientele between
Delhi and Mumbai, we had to modify our designs. We used more heavy
fabrics and did more elaborate embroidery. I worked on productions of two
completely contradicting clientele. Pune has a clientele whose prefers simple
garments without excess work and money wise also people are careful and on
the conservative unlike Mumbai where the clientele is more experimental and
Delhi is where money is readily available and people are ready to spend and
want heavy garments in terms of richness of fabric and embroidery.
Our modifications in design were more in relation with the fabric. For
Delhi fabrics used were rich like brocade in bright colors. The embroideries
were more elaborate.
Carma I assisted one of the assistant designers with this order.
I got an insight into designing as per clientele. Understanding the difference in
various markets and needs of customers
In this project I had to procure fabric and embellishments. I made the
doll latkans for all the garments with tie-ups. The deadline for this project was
the 22nd September which was the day after Eid and the tailors had not
returned in full strength and the order had to go out that very day so we
assisted in stitching garments. We stitched dupatta borders, tunics, gotta strips
for latkans. It was very crucial for us to finish this order because this was the
first time working with Carma and they had a promotional event the next
afternoon.
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STORE PRODUCTION
We designed numerous saris, lehengas, tunics for the store for our bridal
collection and diwali season. I assisted in this project. I designed saris and got
them constructed. Since we were aiming for the bridal collection all our
garments had elaborate embroidery, brocade borders and were very bright and
colorful.
We made accessories from cloth strips. We made neck pieces, coin pouches,
potli bags, belts and head gears. We had leheriya dyed fabrics and waste fabric
which we put to use.
SAHACHARI EXHIBITION
I helped in design modifications and construction of kaftans and anakalis. I
aided in designing kaftans and saris. I helped make the inventory lists, tagging
of the garments. The event was in the world trade centre in Colaba. We made
all the arrangements such as packing all the garments, challan books, tag gun,
tags, visiting cards, visitors diary, stationery, making the costing sheets etc. We
had to move the garments to the world trade centre. I participated in the
exhibition too. We had a very good sale and the exhibition helped generate
more clientele.
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LOOK BOOK
I made the look book for the autumn/ winter 09 collection. I created a drape
texture from the garments used in the collection. The book has the garment
details, the style code, the color options and the backdrop is made from the
drapes and textures existent in the garments.
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LEARNING OUTCOMES
This internship has been a very good eye opener. This is my first association
with the Indian side of design. Since I have never been inclined towards Indian
embroidery and the bright color palettes used, it was a new experience.
I got to carry out the Rudraksh order for 18 garments which aided me in
understanding how production is carried out and also which pieces to give in which
sequence based on embroidery, dying, accessories and trims. I had to make design
development sheets and give a copy to masterji. These technical drawings made me
understand the importance of the minute details as there can be a communication gap
in the design due to misinterpretation of design or lack of details leading to mistakes
which in turn lead to losses.
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RETROSPECT
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