Designer Shaahid Amir to showcase at Cannes

New Delhi: Mumbai-based designer Shaahid Amir will join the impressive list of Bollywood celebrities at the Cannes film festival. He will showcase his collection at the Fashion Week during the ongoing gala event and says he is the first Indian designer to get this honour.

"Cannes did not happen by chance. I was invited to showcase my collection. It is a great honour to have been invited to such a prestigious event. I`ve been told that I am the first resident Indian fashion designer to have received this opportunity and accepted it with utmost humility and grace," Amir told reporters. The fashion show will be held at the Playboy Villa Friday. Amir will present his collection titled Terra Mater (Mother Earth) line, inspired by nature and the Mughal era, at the event. "I am very excited to say the least. Since we did the whole collection in 10 days, my only regret is that I could not personally send out invitations to people who have stood in my support for the longest time. I`m counting on their wishes to make it a saga of fond remembrance," Amir said. "My collection primarily springs from the rudiments of nature and Mughal era. In those days, the jamas and its close cousin, the angarakhas, were developed by taking inspiration from Persian courts and it was imbibed into the Mughal courts. Taking a cue from those lines and cuts, I have given it my own tweak," he added. He has made sure his entire collection is eco-friendly. "I have shied away from using chemical dyes and opted for vegetable dyes. The working title for the collection was `Save the Earth`, so lot of research and detailing has gone into the kind of design elements I wanted to use and blend in the ensemble," he said. Amir has also been a part of Bollywood for two decades and has styled various actors like Aamir Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Sushmita Sen and Saif Ali Khan for movies. This year Bollywood will have a strong presence at the Cannes fest, which started Wednesday, with actresses Aishwarya Rai, Sonam Kapoor, Frieda Pinto, Minissha Lamba and actor Saif Ali Khan walking the red carpet at various events. IANS