First impressions

What if fashion's most original references are not imported at all? MANGLIEN GANGTE reflects on how style grows in overlooked places, far from the industry and its institutions.

- ROYAL T HANGZO

BIRDS OF A FEATHER An archival portrait of Gangte's mother and her friends from the mid '60s, an image he's returned to time and again on moodboards for his shoots.

It was a regular weeknight—the groaning of construction cranes and Mumbai's refusal to pause playing in the background as the doorbell announced the arrival of my manchow soup. I had cued up an episode of Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud, which was convenient because she runs the podcast like a therapy session. I had a deadline breathing down my neck, a shoot in Tamil Nadu going nowhere, and no solution in sight. So I had my therapy via osmosis. Jonathan Anderson, the creative director of Dior, was tonight's guest.

“Looking back, it was the idea of dressing up to feel like you weren't in something, or not part of something. It was almost a fantasy act,” he said, speaking about his wardrobe choices as a teenager in Belfast. “I think it was the idea of something foreign, something that made me feel like I needed to express myself outside of a conformist environment. I grew up in Northern Ireland, born in ’84. Between the mid ’80s and the ’90s, it was a complex place to live.”

I reacted to that sentiment like a Pavlovian dog, spiralling right back to my childhood. That early itch for a different world, that vague, stubborn hope that being a little odd is the point.