“I always believed that clothes mean nothing without a story,” says ace Indian designer Narendra Kumar Ahmed as he shares his excitement over the phone with Outlook after his fashion film ‘2+2= 5 ‘The Brave New World ‘ has become part of the ‘Official Selection for the ‘Berlin Fashion Film Festival 22.’ “This is probably India’s first fashion film to be selected for the event,” he says with utmost pride. The film talks about the current global political climate and Nari as people know him, says that fashion can have more meaning than just wearing clothes.
Each year the Berlin Fashion Film Festival welcomes the fashion community’s top creatives in a celebration of visual storytelling and apparel arts.
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The previous prominent names who were part of the festival were Kanye West in partnership with Division production and director Arnaud Bresson who were shortlisted in the categories of best art direction and best experimental.
Discussing the idea behind the film, Ahmed says, “One book that has been really significant in my fashion career has been George Orwell's '1984' written in 1948. However, he looked at how the world was going to be in the future and today it's almost dystopian that we live in that kind of world. So for me, this was the beginning.
“ It was the marriage of two books (the other is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley ) – one is how about distraction to get what you want and other about coercion to do what you want and you see this happening globally today – countries across the world- whether it Russia or China or many different countries across the globe where a sense of dystopian lifestyle is coming together and this changing pace was inspired by a debate about these two books at I saw at Oxford, I thought it would be good format, for a show and a great story for a collection that was based on the times we live in today. That’s how it started."
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“If you see '2+ 2 = 5' is a brave new world because in the world we live in today, there is nothing or nobody one can trust. Look at the photographs we see on Instagram, the number of filters, and fake news, nothing can be trusted. There are very little time people spending in finding out the absolute truth these are the times we live in," he says.
Nari says that fashion is not only about finding inspiration in palaces or museums, flowers, etc but, fashion like any art should be responsive to the changing world or society we live in. “It should reflect the society we live in and talk about what is happening all across the globe, as a designer my role is to showcase something like that and let the people decide what they want to make of it,” he says.
Asking if he is going to Berlin to attend the event, the designer says he is not sure as yet.
“…but I would love to go and exchange my thoughts with other people as this is the first time a fashion film from India has made it to the cut. Fashion is mostly about clothes on beautiful people in beautiful places but we have to sometimes look inwards and for us, this is about introspecting on what is the world that we want to live in. Fashion also needs to stand up for something,” he sums up.
