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This duo has been on the Indian fashion scene ever since anyone can remember. But what accounts for their longevity as a brand? Sandeep Khosla and Abu Jani ought to be famous. And they are---as Indian fashion designers who create the sort of clothes people can't get their eyes off. They have been famous for quite some years now. They have been famous ever since the duo put up an exhibition in London of traffic-stopping shawls under the label Shakira Cain, according to one source. Jani Khosla are known for clothes that are instantly recognized as being their work. For any designer, and all the more so for a creative partnership, this is something to treasure---a signature style that is not often mistaken. At least not by the fashion literate. So, what sets the duo apart? For one, they rather enjoy using white, though they also use lots of off-white and a wide range of soft pastels, as any of their clients will tell you. And there are many in Mumbai's film industry, including the Bachchans from the venerable film industry. Among corporate patrons, the duo have the daughter of the world's richest Indian, Vanisha Mittal. But a subtle colour palette is barely reason enough to rave about the duo. Nobody got famous for a lighter shade preference. Nor, for that matter, for striking a fine partnership in a business of intense individualism. The point is to deliver something that results in a net increase in human satisfaction, what's otherwise called 'value addition' in the dreary world of business jargon. The more the value addition, the better---and the scope for this in the body-talk business goes as far as the mind can stretch. So what accounts for Jani Khosla's success? The revival and mastery, to put it as clearly as possible, of the old North Indian craft of chikan work. As handicraft expert Laila Tyabji explains it, this is a craft of rather rare skill, and has a vast potential market across the world if marketed intelligently. Why so? It's a matter of aesthetics. Indigenous aesthetics for Indians, exotica for the West. A matter of aesthetics deployed to meet the very motivations that all fashion aims to meet. Now, that's a selling proposition alright. Take a look at some of the best chikan work available, and judge for yourself. Chikan-crafted patterns look their finest on the lightest and airiest of fabrics, the sort created not to sheath the wearer, but to grant selectively filtered rays of light. The effect of a strategically crafted outfit can be quite exquisite.
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