The Hindu Business Line : Regal touch

Meera Ali's design studio in Saket, south Delhi, is a swirl of activity — gossamer fabrics swathe the room in lovely hues. Beautiful clothes, in various stages of construct, lie everywhere. Assistants breeze in and out of the room, the phone trills ever so often while Meera herself is deep in conversation with a colleague.

"This is the most chaotic time of the year for me," she says. The elegant 39-year-old woman with chiselled features clears a pile of clothes from the sofa for us to sit. "I'm showing my fall-winter couture line at the Lakme Fashion Week."

Meera is married to renowned filmmaker Muzaffar Ali, who is also the Raja of Kotwara and recent Padmashree recipient.. The couple is actively involved in developmental workin Kotwara, a village 160 km from Lucknow and nestled in the beautiful Terai region of Uttar Pradesh, bordering Nepal.

But how did Meera, a trained architect from Gujarat's Institute of Environmental Design, get into clothes designing? "It all started as an experiment for me. But before I knew it, I was hooked. Muzaffar, of course, has always designed costumes for his films, inheriting this sensibility from his mother, Rani Kaneez Haider, who was a very aesthetic woman."

What further catalysed her interest in clothes was the family's design centre in Kotwara, which is a groundswell of craftspersons trained in chikankari. Not surprisingly, the Alis are renowned for their exquisite white-on-white chikan collection — a classic representation of Mughal motifs on translucent mulmul and laun fabrics.

Over the last 12 years, the `Kotwara' line of clothes has established a pan-Indian presence at top-notch boutiques. It has also exhibited at the Galleries Lafayette and La Cachmerian in Paris, the Air and Space Museum (New York), and in Singapore, Dubai and London.

The design house, which fashions both Indian and western silhouettes for men and women, showcases two collections each year. "One is always a classic line," explains Meera. "And in the other, we play with silhouettes, fabric and the colour palette."

But what is it like for two creative people working together? "I've always believed that as long as people aren't egocentric and respect each other's sensibilities, the synergy can work wonderfully. For instance, when Muzaffar and I design clothes, he'll do the sketches and I'll interpret them in silhouettes and fabrics. When he goes overboard with his creativity, ignoring the commercial aspect, I tone his designs down. This keeps us on an even keel," she says.

This pact extends to their other engagements too. Dwar Pe Rozi is a cooperative founded by Muzaffar Ali in 1990 in Kotwara that promotes the region's art and crafts, and also runs a school set in a 14-acre mango grove. With support from the Umang Charitable Society, the Sam Rich Endowment Fund and the couple's friends, the school has grown and has today 14 teachers and 320 kids, mostly belonging to Kotwara village.

"Our school teaches humanist values. We also impart training in carpet weaving, embroidery and tailoring," says Meera. Impressed by the school's template, UNESCO has adopted it under its Village One World programme and even sponsored a dhurrie-weaving workshop and a school newspaper project called `Kabira'. The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, US, conducts an annual student's programme at this school.

The ancestral Anwalhare Palace, which was originally a mud fort built in 1892 at Kotwara, is set amidst a garden of fragrant red roses and Meera is painstakingly restoring the edifice to its old glory. The palace has three independent havelis — Mustafa Manzil, Sajjad Manzil and Sartaj Mahal — and houses an archive of film costumes, as well as the region's handicrafts.

The restoration work has taken over 13 years "and will possibly take forever. I don't have a vast team nor do I have huge resources," laughs Meera.

The couple recently organised Jahan-E-Khusaru, the annual International Sufi Music Festival at Delhi's historic Arab Ki Sarai in conjunction with Delhi Tourism. The four-year-old festival plays host to renowned artists such as Sufi singer Abida Perveen. While Muzaffar Ali handles the selection of music and musicians, Meera attends to the production design, which includes costumes, stage design, seating arrangements, hospitality and the technicians.

So how does she juggle her myriad avatars? "If you have a positive outlook, and approach people and situations with a sense of humour, it makes things much easier. Also, to me relationships are most important. I invest a lot of time and emotion in them. And, most important, find creativity in all that you do."

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