Evolution of a designer-raconteur
Reviewed by Aradhika Sharma

The Green Room
by Wendell Rodricks Rupa.
Pages 356. Rs 595

Fashion, designs, models, fashion lines, fashion merchandising, creativity, creations and the hard work that goes into all of it. If you want to get into the real world of fashion, then Wendell Rodricks will take you there and with much more authenticity and much less salaciousness than filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar did in his film, Fashion.

We learn that fashion is not about the glamour — that's only the last, projected bit. It's about inspiration, and then of converting that thought into reality and that takes training and painstaking work; working with darzis and with the karigars who are master craftsmen, and who can translate the dream into a reality that will draw the "Oohs!" and the "Ahs!" from fashionistas. Of course, that's not enough. They have to sell as well. Only then will the designer be rich and famous and desired.

Wendall's book was released in the Lakme Fashion Week. Apt. There are plenty of gossipy tidbits in the pages to keep the reader amused. When he talks of the Vogue cover and Priety Zinta on it, he wickedly says, "So poor Preity Zinta was stuffed into a banana-yellow couture gown while wearing a Dior watch, another branded bag and Cartier earrings."

His repertoire of stories includes an interesting one about the light-eyed model who was the girlfriend of an underworld Don- "I have learnt that fashion and beauty can attract the wrong kind of attention" and about the ‘gaydar’ that models invariable have hardwired into their system.

He writes about the jeweller who sponsored a fashion week to promote his jewellery and conned Shilpa Shetty and Sheetal Malhar by giving them fake jewellery as payment.

But gossip is not the main focus of the book. It actually spans Rodricks’ struggle and successes in his 25 years in the fashion industry. He was born to a middle class family in Mahim, Goa, with lots of aunts who were definite ‘personalities’. He started his career as a student of hotel management and worked in a hotel in Oman, which was sheer tedium to him. It was in Dubai that he met Jerome Marrel, his French boyfriend, with whom he has shared a long and lasting relationship.

The reader is taken on the same voyage of discovery that Wendell covered, and his journey towards his signature minimalism style, where he uses fabrics cut in a linear line. His incorporation of fashion with Braille designs, so that the visually challenged could read on fabric; of using sea and surf, of the elements and of art in his creations make for fascinating reading. The Green Room in Rodricks' second book. The first one was titled Moda Goa: History and Style and was released in the early part of 2012.

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