The draped, sexy, body-hugging side of Priya Ahluwalia’s work is clearly made for going out and having a good time. Take her one-shoulder emerald green satin dress, with skin-revealing sides, or a bit of a train, or a printed jersey top that extends upwards into a head-drape.
Not so apparent are the dual strands that shape her aesthetic: her enjoyment of dressing up in both Nigerian and Indian traditional clothing on family occasions. “It’s something that’s really prevalent in our womenswear—I’m always looking at the way Nigerian and Indian and clothing drapes,” she said.
In common with how many British children of second and third generation immigrants feel today—she’s in her early thirties—Ahluwalia said she’ll really go for traditional dress, given the chance. “Nigerian outfits have got different names, but the fabric is Ankara, and the head-piece is a gele. I’ve worn that a lot, visiting my father’s side in Lagos,” she related in a studio interview. “And when I go to Indian weddings, which happens about twice a year, I’ll wear a sari. My mum’s got lots of them at home. I like wearing it quite traditionally, because I don’t wear them very often.”
This season, Ahluwalia spent her research time thinking about “cultural archiving, and how information changes over time.” She visited the V&A museum, the Black British Archives in Brixton, and immersed herself in Adriano Pedrosa’s book Afro-Atlantic Histories.
But Ahluwalia’s studies manifest in her brand subliminally. A man’s long-line blurry-checked wool jacket was inspired by a Kohli coat her grandfather had made in Mumbai in the 1970s. The texture of a salt-and-pepper tweed she cut as a trouser suit “reminded me of that snow-storm effect you used to get on TV when watching old family videos,” she said. These ideas, and some of the coded significance of her patterns (she looked at cave paintings for her etched denim prints) are around “cultural conservation” and preserving treasured mementos. Ahluwalia’s resin charm and chain jewelry reminds her “of passing down jewelry, which is important in my culture.” (The customizable pieces are available at Pandora from now until September.)
It was a smaller collection this season “because we weren’t having a show, but it’s meant that we’ve been able to really play around with the textures more,” said Ahluwalia. Her convening of her enthusiastic London community—always a big music-led celebration with people showing how good her party dresses, print shirts and jazzy knits look on a dressed-up occasion—was missed. Part of her reasoning was saving the money a show would have cost (she estimates venue hire alone has leapt 25 percent in London since three years ago) to work on the “nuts and bolts of our business. Our website is being updated at the moment, and that takes a lot of time, yeah, and effort. There are a lot of things that I want to prioritize more. Our biggest customers are in the US. Something gets bought every day that way.”
Pivoting more to direct-to-consumer relationships is the story of many independent designers, whatever country they live in—the collapse of Matches, for example, was a blow to London’s emerging designers, but also to many more throughout fashion. Ahluwalia loves throwing a show though, and she promised that skipping February shows was only a blip: she’ll be back at London Fashion Week in September.
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