I Wear: The Boheme At Kala Ghoda

The Kala Ghoda Art Festival is an event I look forward to all year. In the past few years, I’ve been covering the event for the Official Kala Ghoda Gazette. This year I had the privilege of conducting (in part) a workshop with my session on blogging.

It’s been a year and half since I stood up to make a presentation but the old b-school instincts started to kick in. One of my magic mantras for knocking knees and stammers (the bane of all public-speaking phobics) is to dress well. When I look good, I feel good and it gives me confidence.

This being an art event, I had a much wider palate to play with than usual. So I completely disregarded the safer colours in my wardrobe and decided to go splash with the most artistic, bohemian apparel I could think of.

I started with my yellow shoes, a pick from the post-New Year sale at Catwalk. Yellow is my colour for the season, the new red or black or pink or whatever. It has all the pizzazz of red but with the innocence of white and a glee all its own. I fell in love with this pair the minute I tried them on, because of how they looked but also how they felt – comfortable and happy.

Jeans were the obvious match for those shoes, the more basic blue, the more faded and discrete, the better. These are my favorite straight-fit basic blue Levis.

I considered wearing a tee-shirt in the same colour as the shoes but decided against it as it would divide focus between the top and bottom halves. So I wore a white chikan FabIndia kurti instead. This piece is versatile enough to team up with trousers for a formal meeting or match with jeans for a laid-back look. I funked it up with a chunky necklace from FabIndia.

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, says Bigby Wolf and that’s my mantra too. Subtle is not my style and when I’m going for boheme, there’s no restraint. In this ensemble, I couldn’t possibly leave my favorite blue-and-yellow Chettinad checkered dupatta (also from FabIndia) at home. I slung it over my neck and tossed one end over a shoulder. I figured if it got cooler in the evening, it could double up as a shawl.

It would be a pity to falter on the bag with such a colourful ensemble. So I brought out the cloth drawstring bag that a friend brought me back from her vacation in Coorg. It’s grass green jute stamped with gold block prints and has a bright yellow drawstring and shoulder straps. Green wooden bangles from FabIndia completed my look.

Too colourful? Take a look:

I wear:

• Yellow moccasins: Catwalk
• Blue straight-fit jeans: Levis
• White chikan kurti: FabIndia
• Blue & yellow chettinad checks dupatta: FabIndia
• Chunky retro wooden necklace on thread chain: FabIndia
• Green and blue wooden bangles: FabIndia
• Green jute bag with gold block print & yellow straps: street bazaar, Coorg

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If I look good, the credit goes to E Vestigio who shot all the pictures featured in this post.

Update: Blurring the face may detract from the quality of the picture and subsequently the post. But trolling & harassment are causing the only option to be no posts at all. I think all of you will agree with me that this is a reasonable solution. I don’t wish to discuss this further so please do not start any conversations on this issue, on this blog..