Birthday Treat

When I last interviewed the sisters Tina and Nikita Sutradhar behind the label Miuniku, they talked about the colours that they see on a day to day basis in their hometown of Mumbai in India and how that vividness seeps into their work, albeit in a less ornate and directly graphic way.  I know I’ve not ra-ed on about it too much on the blog (there’s a good reason why… all will be revealed round about September time) but on my short trip to India back in February, I got to experience that saturation of colour for real.  And it’s every bit as vivid as I had imagined.

Being submerged into this ongoing frenetic sensory kaleidoscope, you wonder how Tina and Nikita manage to restrain themselves when it comes to channelling their surroundings into their collections for Miuniku.  A/W 15-6 follows in a somewhat similar vein to their LVMH runner-up prize winning graduate collection as well as their Swim S/S 15 collection, which is just beginning to hit stores now.  Just as the sister duo are able to take a nuanced look at the colours around them, so it is that they also look back at childhood memories with a similarly abstracted view.  Their latest collection is inspired all the joy and awesomeness of a children’s birthday party from the lurid gift wrapped pressies to the glittery cone hats to the confetti and even the hundreds and thousands sprinkles that you get on cupcakes.  It’s a solid visual language that they have built up, directly trickling down from their graduate collection but it is one that sticks in your head, especially when you’re assaulted (in a good way) with sharp lines, clever colour blocking and almost deceptively 2-D planes.

Tina and Nikita are inching their way back to London where their design careers began (they studied at LCF) whilst maintaining production in Mumbai.  The contrasts between the two cities though is clearly yielding excellent results in terms of their collections.

If your head is still ‘swimming’ in their S/S 15 collection (currently on Opening Ceremony and TheCorner.com), have a gander at this cute little video: