Chivas, the world’s first luxury blended scotch whisky, hosted an immersive experience ‘CHIVAS STUDIO’ in association with renowned designers Shivan & Narresh. The evening brought together the visual interpretation of the blend, that is at the heart of Chivas. Here’s a tête-à-tête with Shivan and Narresh for Chivas Studio.
- Could you elaborate on the concept of designing Chivas Studio?
Designing for Chivas Studio has been a very exciting venture. We were given the task of tangibly designing something which is very intangible and experiential, which are the four notes of Chivas and this responsibility to come up with four prints, each of which were to signify four notes of Chivas was something which is very exciting for us as designers. What we plan to do today in the evening is essentially a showcase in an experiential format of an evening where there are four experiential zones where you get to experience these four notes of Chivas and hopefully enjoy that.
- What is your association with Chivas?
Our association with Chivas has been about defining notes of Chivas and celebrating the blend. I feel that because these four notes are so unique, when they come together, they basically create magic and we in this collaboration are here to celebrate that magic and what we’ve done is to do one amalgamated blend print for Chivas, which will also be celebrated tonight. That’s something that you should come and experience.
- How often do you travel for inspiration?
We travel every month. We believe in living holiday to holiday rather than paycheck to paycheck. I think it inspires us not only to design for our next collection, but also to get inspired and send people on holidays. Since we are essentially a luxury holiday brand, holidays become the DNA of what we do and travel is a huge part of that. When you go out and out of your home, what you experience are so many forms of tangible and intangible elements that help you envision and make people live and have better holidays. We’re very proud to bring that change in people’s lives.
- Which are some of the recent places you visited and what inspired you there?
This year we have visited quite a few places. I’ve been to Korea, Turkey, Istanbul, Spain, Seychelles, Vietnam. My last was Korea, which is very, very significant and I feel like it really put us in a very, very alternative universe. Just to see a country which is so complete in its own universe and how they celebrate design and aesthetic and their own fashion was completely mind blowing. From traditional Korean elements to contemporary millennial K-pop style of looking at the world. As designers we were completely inspired and, in fact we are giving an ode to Korea as a part of our next collection, which is inspired by Seoul in Korea.
- What are the latest trends these days?
I feel that largely the world is moving towards genderless, seasonless fashion. I feel that a lot of boundaries are being broken, when it comes to stereotyping or the kind of fashion that you should be doing for being a certain gender or being a certain season or coming from a certain country. So I think we’re really democratizing fashion even more and we’re breaking more rules. So I think anything that you do in the spirit of celebrating that, can easily be seen in a fashionable way.
- How have you evolved over the years?
I think when I look back about nine years ago when we started, we were really fixated on a single category and obsessed with bathing suits with swimwear for women in India. Even though we looked at it from a design perspective, we very soon realized that the women that we were dealing with actually looked at swimwear completely from a body positivity angle. For them, it wasn’t about fashion as much as it was about just falling in love with themselves when they look at themselves in the mirror. So we very soon realized that we were actually dealing with confidence more than fashion. It became a big starting point of evolution for us as designers to see that the category that we deal with, as much as fashion is seem to be a very frivolous is actually a very important category and how women feel about themselves. Because it’s an intimate category of clothing, how they feel and what they wear on their body is a big way of how they like to live. So it just helped us to start to evolve in this direction as designers and then every category that we picked up, whether it was resort wear or men’s wear, destination weddings, we only stuck to this. Pushing body confidence with women, trying to solve problems in their lives through design whether it was the invention of the Bikini Saree, or the Mastectomy Blouse.
We felt that as designers in a young country like India, if we don’t do problem solving and make everyday life simpler for women, no engineer, no doctor can do that because this is our fight of making them feel good on everyday basis. I feel that it’s really helped us in evolving as designers and thinking of how society can be better with good design in the last nine years.
- What is your latest collection all about?
Our latest collection like I said, is inspired from Seoul in Korea and it’s called The Seoul Series because it was inspired by our recent trip to Seoul and I feel It’s a very interesting mix of what traditional Korea stands for and what the millennial Kpop Korea stands for and that juxtaposition is what truly makes Korea and we have five beautiful prints that we’ve done. They’re called Hututi, Mujigay, Kurt, Morning Calm and each of them have been inspired by different artists or different art that we experienced when we were in Korea.
