SS24 saw Supriya Lele’s woman emerge from the car park raves of her youth with an elevated anti-spirit. Raising a two-finger salute to those who dare stand in her way, she strides onwards with a sophisticated, louche sensuality, draped in rich fabrications and minimalist silhouettes slashed low on the hipbone or spliced seductively to the naval. Evoking traditional narratives tied to Lele’s cultural heritage, classical Indian statues of goddesses are reborn in knotted minidresses and delicate knitwear crafted in spidery translucency, while leather coats of armour craft a supple layer. Marking Lele’s first standalone show outside of the BFC’s NEWGEN initiative and her return to the London circuit, this season was a defining, emblematic moment for the designer, and her woman.

Ella Joyce: SS24 marked your return to the London Fashion Week schedule after an eighteen-month hiatus and was also your first standalone show, how did it feel to be back?
Supriya Lele: It was quite a big moment for the brand. I was working with a new creative team and I’d dipped away a little bit to do all these other little things and it felt like a really nice moment to come back. I think the show was successful in that way, it was unpretentious, we’re such a small brand so it’s still very rootsy, but it felt like a moment for me and I was really excited and proud of it. It was also fun to have all these new creative voices involved who brought a lot of new energy to the project.

EJ: It took place in the fifth-floor car park of the Barbican, what was the decision behind that location choice?
SL: When we were deciding venues we were thinking a lot about community and what that means. We felt like the Barbican was a symbolic place to show as [it represents] a sense of community and a modern way of living, so to speak. We found this part of the car park and it felt really cool rather than trying to make a big, grand statement. We’ve currently got a group show exhibition split between Qrystal Partners [Lele’s South London gallery co-founded with Donald Ryan] and Parinaz Mogadassi’s gallery TRAMPS, which explores a conversation around the anxiety of the city, particularly the city of London. Although the artists are global, we’ve rooted that exhibition across two spaces and you almost have to travel from south to north to go and see both, so we were looking at broader conversations. [The show] felt like an exhibition moment of its own.

“I’m a three-dimensional person when it comes to making my work, I need to see something to understand it.”

EJ: It’s quite liminal when you think about it like that, almost like a meeting place.
SL: Exactly, it’s a transitory place – a car park within a community living scape.

EJ: This show felt like it marked a shift in your design language while still being quintessentially you and I want to delve into that. What was the starting point for this season? Where did the ideas begin?
SL: What happened was, I took that time out, I worked on a big Victoria’s Secret project [Lele was one of four designers asked to contribute to the brand’s comeback show in 2023], and I was developing a lot of ideas during that time because I had free rein to design and develop anything I wanted. I designed loads of really cool things and I moved my work on but obviously, I hadn’t shown it. The starting point was looking at classical Indian statues, motifs of the woman and stone forms which were essentially goddess sculptures. I was looking at the motifs I often revert to, which are more punk or subcultural references, although it’s not an aesthetically punky collection it’s more about the anti-spirit that I’m always trying to encapsulate – a little bit of a ‘fuck you’ vibe. She’s that kind of girl. The pieces might be pretty but the attitude is there. Working with Jane How [stylist] was also really exciting because she’s so established, she’s a huge image maker of our time and has the confidence to pair things back and allow them to just be, there’s no over-styling in that sense. It felt quite minimal and stripped back in a way, which made it feel mature and grown-up, it felt quite serious as a proposition in my eyes.

EJ: Definitely. Your heritage also plays an important role in the DNA of your brand, how do you see that continuing to evolve?
SL: There is such a rich amount of information that can be found. As a designer who’s been having this conversation around my identity since I began, it’s almost like I’m on a journey to explore what that means for me as well. Each season I’m able to explore different facets, it’s a never-ending process. In the collection we’re working on at the moment [FW24], I’ve tapped into something a little bit more traditional but I’m thinking of how I can flip it on its head and make it feel really me. There’s an ebb and flow to it, each season I feel drawn to different things, it could be a print or a textile, or a colour, or a silhouette, or a drape, or a shape. I have all these old photo albums I inherited from my family and my grandfather kept all of my mum’s old documents from when she was growing up. There are all these amazing letters and letterheads, there’s an entire visual identity within that which is extremely personal to me. We work with Jonny Lu as our art director, and he has been amazing at put- ting those motifs on our show invites. What we’re trying to do is begin fleshing out that world. It’s ever-expanding but it’s a slow expansion, it’s not a big slap in the face, it’s subtle and it’s personal.

EJ: What aspects of your own youth still inspire you today – there’s a strong subcultural, subversive element to your work?
SL: Oh yeah, massively. I used to be really into wearing all sorts of crazy stuff like PVC and going to underground goth clubs in car parks. [laughs]

EJ: And now you’re showing in one – full circle! [both laugh]
SL: Right?! If I was customising something I was going to wear, I’d cut it up, put safety pins in it, drape it and pin it – in a way, that’s kind of how I still make clothes now. I think the sari is very punk too. It’s just a rectangle of fabric and pre-colonialism Indian women didn’t wear a bra, they didn’t wear a blouse, that was introduced later down the line and so it really was just a beautiful piece of fabric wrapped and pinned around the body. Which is pretty punk, right?

“I was looking at the motifs I often revert to, which are more punk or subcultural references, although it’s not an aesthetically punky collection it’s more about the anti-spirit that I’m always trying to encapsulate”

EJ: Absolutely. Draping is synonymous with your work and I know you work directly onto the body, which feels particularly important when designing for the female form. Can you tell us a little about why you work this way and what it brings to the garments?
SL: It’s an expensive habit. [laughs] I’m quite well known for the draping aspect of my work, it’s very form-fitting and there are certain ways to create movement within the garment. For me, it’s really important to do that directly on the body because you don’t know how it feels until you wear it. You can’t really design my things flat, because they’re just not. [laughs] They’re moulded on the body and the relationship with my fit model is really important because she tells me what’s working, what isn’t working, what feels weird and what feels great. All of those considerations come into play when developing something and I use a lot of stretch fabric for these kinds of pieces. I’m a three-dimensional person when it comes to making my work, I need to see something to understand it. It’s better for me to see prototypes early on and then we put them on the body, cut them up, distort them, rework them, play with them, pin them, extend them, and we can get really excited because we start seeing what this could be. Then we start asking, “How does this move? How does she walk? Can she bend over? Can she sit down?” [laughs]

EJ: Those things are important for the girls! [both laugh] This season also saw the introduction of knitwear and leather garments, what was it like introducing those elements?
SL: The knitwear was really fun to do. We were so excited about the idea of seeing what the Supriya Lele knit vision would be and obviously, it was very naked. I think it was super cool, it was directional, it was graphic, but it was still fluid, it was modern and I thought it was really sensitive and sensual. It was like metallic snake skin on the body. A few seasons before, I’d done these embroideries that were like fishnets and I loved how they sat close to the body but then swung and moved while also looking like this very delicate bejewelled skin. So I took that and translated it into knit with this idea of a graphic pattern across your body, which turned out beautifully. We had a lot of fun developing those and I want to keep developing knitwear, it makes a lot of sense with what I do, when you think about a little sheer knit sweater, it works within the layering of the world.

EJ: It felt really seamless, it looked like it was just meant to be there.
SL: Exactly. It didn’t feel like, “Oh, here’s the knitwear.” What would a big-knit Supriya cardigan look like? Who knows? It could be kind of cool. I always enjoy working with leather because it gives a nice contrast to the fluid aspect of my work. I love wearing old leather pieces, and I love that tough girl look – I’ve always loved it. When the Bentley partnership came along [the leather garments in the SS24 collection were created in collaboration with the British car manufacturer], it was quite fun because it was a nice way to work with a heritage brand that is so synonymous with this country, it’s a very old-school, respected car brand. I loved that it had nothing to do with fashion and the idea of taking something traditional and moving it forward, incrementally. Their attention to detail is absolutely insane, I went to the factory and I literally geeked out, I was like, “This is probably the coolest day out I’ve ever had.” They build the cars pretty much by hand, there are very few robotic elements. They mould all the leather over the seats by hand and have seamstresses doing a very specific zigzag stitch by hand with a needle, one woman had been there for 25 years, just doing that stitch. It’s kind of like couture, they can make these cars in any colour. They would talk about how they have clients who come in with a sequin from a dress and say, “Can you make me a whole car based on this sequin?” In the spray paint- ing area, they have all these different coloured lights that they shine on the car while they’re painting it and they’re for different cities across the world to show the different light tones of the sun and how the car’s colour will look there. It’s insane. In my brain, I was like, “Now I want to do a car!” I’m a car nerd and love old cars. It’s a sustainable angle as well as they were giving me the skins that they had spare and I was able to make pieces with them.

EJ: One more thing we have to talk about from last season is the shoes, talk to me about the jelly shoes – I loved them.
SL: The Cressis! [laughs] They were really unexpected, Jane was like, “This is the vibe,” and I was like, “Is it the vibe?” And it was just so the vibe. I love the idea of a naked foot and it was so good, so cool, they’re fabulous. They’re rock shoes for the sea and funnily enough, I bought a pair when I was on holiday in sum- mer and Donnie [Donald Ryan] was like, “They should be in your next show.” I was like, “Haha, very funny,” and now here we are.

“I think what is nice is to have that creative control over how you want to present your work, it’s exciting.”

EJ: Let’s talk about Qrystal Partners, how did that come to be and how did art find a place in your world?
SL: I met Donnie at a dinner party almost two years ago but it feels like a lifetime ago – we became really good friends really quickly. It was just a very natural thing, we became best mates. He’s an art dealer and a curator and he’d just left his job. Meanwhile, I was on a bit of a break figuring out how I wanted to move into the next phase with the brand. He started giving me some advice as he works so closely with artists, I would never put myself in that category but I guess my brain works similarly. He met this artist called Jai Chuhan, who is amazing, she’s a British painter of Indian origin who studied at Slade in the 70s, which is mega. We talked a lot and there are so many similarities between her work and mine, from the obvious aesthetic colour referencing down to symbolism, narrative and concepts that she uses within her paintings. He introduced me to her and we just really clicked. We decided we wanted to do something with her work, we wanted to find a temporary space to do an exhibition so I spoke to my landlord and he was like, “There’s a space going but it’s the pharmacy downstairs, if you take it for a year you can name a price.” We just took it, did Jai’s show and then it became this thing. It became a really natural partnership, I work on my brand, Donnie works on Qrystal mostly but we dip in and out of both, TRAMPS is Parinaz’s gallery and we all work independently and together. It’s been nice because the gallery is literally below my studio, it still looks like a pharmacy at the front and people get really irate about it. I needed to feel something that wasn’t fashion-related, I needed to feel inspired and excited, and I do with that. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s inspiring and what’s amazing is being able to meet these artists and talk to them about their process, their vision, how they make work, what that means to them, and relate to them. You never know what can come out of these sorts of things, letting things happen organically can open up so many different avenues and that’s what’s exciting about it.

EJ: Has spending time among other creatives altered your perception of creativity in any way or changed the way you work on the brand?
SL: I feel like I’ve got more support from a structural point of view. Donnie and Parinaz aren’t artists; they’re amazingly talented curators, dealers, and creatives in their own right but they’re not artists and don’t claim to be. What is nice is that they work in a different industry, they don’t work in fashion. They’re working with me, they get how business works, they understand creativity but they’re not directly involved in fashion. It’s nice for my brain because it means I can work the way I like to but I’m also supported in other ways.

EJ: We touched upon London briefly earlier but as a womenswear designer living and working in the city, how does it contribute to the way you work and what does London represent for you?
SL: London is a tricky one, I love this city so much and I love living here. It is huge though, it’s bloody massive and I spend all day traipsing around. I know people band this word around but I do think there is a community here and I think that community is really good. I think people are really nice, really open, really passionate, really supportive and really give a shit about what you’re doing, which other cities just don’t have. Obviously, being a person living in this city is so hideously expensive and as an emerging creative it’s challenging to navigate having a business in a city that costs so much to live in. But I love how there are all these levels of support and London is the creative place, in my opinion. Fashion-wise, all the newness comes from here, which is what I like about it.

EJ: How designers present collections is also continuously changing, do you see yourself exploring new ways of presenting collections in favour of the traditional show set-up?
SL: Oh my gosh, absolutely. We aren’t doing a show in February [2024], but we’re going to do something really cool. What’s important is to do what’s right for you and figure out how to do that, storytelling is really important to my brand so it just has to feel like the right move. I don’t see the point in doing a show in a white box, it doesn’t make sense to me but maybe it does for another brand – each to their own. I think what is nice is to have that creative control over how you want to present your work, it’s exciting.

Feature originally published in Heroine 20. 

all clothing and accessories by SUPRIYA LELE SS24

photography ÉCOUTE CHÉRIE;
fashion ISABEL BONNER;
model FLORENCE HUTCHINGS at THE HIVE MANAGEMENT;
hair KANAE KIKUCHI at HACO using INSTANT ICON;
make-up LYDIA WARD-SMITH using DIOR FOREVER FOUNDATION and
CAPTURE TOTALE LE SÉRUM;
nail artist NAHO NUMATA at HACO;
casting ALEXANDRE JUNIOR CYPRIEN;
photography assistant GUILLAUME MERCIER

Feature originally published in Heroine 20. 

model FLORENCE HUTCHINGS at THE HIVE MANAGEMENT;
hair KANAE KIKUCHI at HACO using INSTANT ICON;
make-up LYDIA WARD-SMITH using DIOR FOREVER FOUNDATION and
CAPTURE TOTALE LE SÉRUM;
nail artist NAHO NUMATA at HACO;
casting ALEXANDRE JUNIOR CYPRIEN;
photography assistant GUILLAUME MERCIER