One of the pioneering designers during the Eighties, Rina Dhaka transformed the city into an epicenter of avant-garde fashion design. That is no small feat, considering that her label is self-financed. While a brooding, intellectual quality evolved as the hallmark of Indian designers, Dhaka continually balances it with her contemporary "style vs. sexiness" aesthetic. Today, she boasts "Best Designer Award in Miami Fashion Week 2004", has shown her work in The Louvre Paris, was bestseller at a Bollywood promotion at Selfridges. Her stellar clientele includes Naomi Campbell, Uma Thurman, Tara Palmer Tomlinson and Vittorio Radice, to name a few.

"It is important to participate in fashion weeks because we showcase our design to the media within India, Asia and even overseas as well as to the customers who come to place order with us based on those styles. It is a trade event. However, the essential need of the hour is partnership with private sectors or the business heads with fashion designers and their factories; essentially the marriage of the factory, designer and investor," she tells us. "I am working on my business and sending out shipments to America in addition to attempting a store opening in collaboration with a businessman in Mumbai."

Rina Dhaka has closely worked with models and we figure she is the perfect person to advise aspirants how to "cross over" from glamorous shoots to those with rarefied aesthetic aspirations i.e. supermodel. "A model who aspires to be a supermodel can become one if she has the X factor. The requirement to be one can be an exceptional beauty of body, great face, ability to have a wonderful walk, discipline and fabulous abs," she tells it like it is, without a blink.

As we wrap up, she leaves us with trends for the sunny days i.e. "the criss-cross dress, the color nude, the long maxi, and cotton white shirts, khakis, trousers and skirts."

— Jasmeen Dugal
Photographs — Press Kit