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Shriya Som –  Fashion’s Interpreter of Dreams

An East-West Love Affair 

You’ve seen her fabulous couture on the runway, on noted Bollywood celebrities, influencers and fashionistas. Designer Shriya Bhupal’s eponymous label ‘Shriya Som’ is so coveted by brides that it’s probably one of the reasons to get married! Chic and very contemporary, her unique color palette and silhouettes create a global look that is uniquely Indian.

Shriya Som is a Hyderabad based design house which designs and distributes luxury wear and bridal wear. Herself a social influencer, Shriya’s ensembles have been worn by celebrities like P.V. Sindhu, Jahnvi Kapoor, Athiya Shetty, and Lisa Haydon, not to mention many, many brides and fashionistas.

Shriya’s own story has a global flavor too: she was born in America, grew up in Hyderabad, studied in New York and London, and traveled the world – and all these cross-cultural influences are echoed in her youthful couture.

There were some early clues of her passion for fashion – as a seven-year-old, her dolls were probably the best-dressed in the neighborhood!

“Looking back, I seem to remember having few dolls but weirdly enough, lots of clothes for them!” she recalls. “I used to love to buy extra clothes for the Barbie dolls and then almost tear these apart, using safety pins to put these outfits back together again. So I guess that’s where my love of pinning began!”

As a child, Shriya was also sketching, painting and doodling but making art and design her career seemed out of the realm of possibility. The grand-daughter of a major business magnate, everyone in the family was part of the corporate world, involved in the hospitality and infrastructure industries.

Her mother and grandmother, both strong women, had always worked in the business.  “As entrepreneurs, they had never really got into art or fashion – that was something they had never even thought about,” she says. “So when I told them I wanted to venture out and explore this, it was a bit of a shock for them. When I said I wanted to start a fashion brand after college, the first response was ‘Show me a business plan!’”

Shriya did not show them the piles of Barbie outfits redesigned with safety pins, but did pursue an arts education at the Parsons School of Design in New York, zeroing in on fashion. “I absolutely loved it and was intrigued by how you can work with the female body and create all these different silhouettes and moods – I was completely in love with that and experimenting with it.”

Her time in frenetic New York also led to a life-long love affair with the city and its streets teeming with people from all over the world. “It was amazing – and also very inspiring,” she says and still tries to come back to the Big Apple every year though recently that’s not been possible.

On her return to India after her arts education, she decided to start her own brand but remembered one key learning point from Parsons – always find your niche, find what makes you different from everyone else. She had worked briefly with Naeem Khan and then interned with Tarun Tahiliani whom she considers her mentor, “He always critiques me every season, pushing me to be better, which is amazing!”

Having worn the best of global designers, Shriya knew where she wanted her brand to go. All the while, ideas were percolating in her mind and she looked to highlight evening wear, which she loves.  “I decided why not do something that India does not have – which is bridge the gap between the Western world and the Indian world.”

She had her finger on the pulse of the changing fashion scene in India where the younger generation enjoyed wearing western clothes but when it came to Indian events like weddings, they had fewer choices to speak in the voice of the modern Indian woman.  Shriya decided to westernize the Indian wedding outfit and make it all about understated elegance.

Her clean lines and subtle styling have caught on with young independent women and are sold in her flagship Hyderabad store, online as well as in boutiques.  Although they fall in the realm of Western fusion, Shriya works with clients to style the garment to their unique personality.  “I experiment a lot with different silhouettes and textured fabrics, as well as corsetry which bring it towards that western feel of the fit, because fit and finish are important to me,” she says.

 

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A post shared by Shriya Som (@shriyasom)

While her silhouettes are Western, her fabrics are a mix of east and west. She uses tulle, chiffon and organza for her ensembles but has recently started incorporating a lot of Indian fabrics, especially Pochampally ikats from the Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh.

“I worked with the weavers there in weaving the fabric specifically to our color story,” she says. “We wanted to get the pops of color and worked with the weavers to make it look very different from the traditional colors. There’s a small place called Nursapur where they also make amazing cotton lace. So we work with the craft council there to employ women weavers who are essentially homemakers. It’s very powerful and uplifting to see them earning their own salary.”

Indian embroidery is a vital part of her creations, and she incorporates different techniques of hand and machine embroidery. “These are all Indian techniques but they’ve never been used before in a subtle Western way,” she says. “I use more of delicate threadwork embroidery inspired by the gara technique.”

An unabashed romantic, Shriya’s couture is a celebration of flowers and gardens – and each flower is special, it rarely gets repeated. She loves nature, which has an unending repertoire with so many different aspects, motifs and interpretations. Whether it’s embroidered flowers or shaping them out of fabric, gardens are always in season for her.

Through the bleak period of the pandemic, Shriya escalated her CSR activities, employing her production unit to create PP suits and masks for health care workers and those in need.

 

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A post shared by Shriya Som (@shriyasom)

For this New York trained designer from Hyderabad, there is now an interesting cross-cultural connection: Recently Children’s Hope India, a NY-based organization honored Shriya for her dynamic fashion career and the work that she does to support women and children. She recently visited the young girls in CHI-Eklavya School in Hyderabad to mentor them about fashion and entrepreneurship. She took along several of her store mannequins dressed in the gorgeous Shriya Som collection – elegant visitors the schoolgirls could never have seen before!

“I was thrilled to see the excitement and gleam in the eyes of the children whom I interacted with,” she says.  She answered their many questions about her recent collection and engaged in creative exercises which she had planned for them. For Shriya Bhupal, there must have been a feeling of satisfaction and pure joy, having herself become enamored with art and design as a child.

A door to a brand-new world was opened for these young girls – and who knows where this chance encounter could lead?

( What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!)