Satya Paul, Revolutionary Designer Who Transformed The Indian Saree Passes Away At 78

The fashion industry faces a heavy loss with the news of top Indian fashion designer, Satya Paul’s demise at age 78 on 6^th January 2021.

Popularly known for his unique take on the traditional Indian saree, Satya Paul was one of the very first designers to shoot his shot at re-inventing the Indian saree into a modern piece of art, which completely turned around the perception of Indian wear.

His designs were highly experimental full of bold geometric prints with the use of unfamiliar fabrics like muga, crepe and tussar silk for designing sarees, which were quite rare in India at the time.

He launched L’Affaire boutique, India’s first saree boutique in 1980. His fresh take on traditional Indian wear was instantly loved by modern Indian women. This encouraged him to further create more revolutionary pieces.

Over the years, slowly revolutionizing Indian wear one design at a time, Paul became a popular designer amongst many celebrities not just from the Bollywood industry but also globally.

Followed by this, Satya created his most popular design which was the ‘trouser saree’-a sartorial representation of the modern Indian woman, steering away from the traditional Banarasi saree.

At the heart of it, Satya Paul’s brand stood for simply making people feel better about wearing his designs. It concluded his vision for what India meant to him.

Top Indian designers like Masaba and Kaushik Velendra took to social media to express their heartfelt condolences for the revolutionary creator. ‘His brand will stand the test of time’ and ‘I always thought of him as an artist. He worked with his colors like a painter’ are some of the kind words that were shared.

Paul’s son, Puneet Nanda shared on Facebook that the designer had suffered from a massive stroke in December, from which he had not recovered.

While this comes as a big loss to the fashion world, Satya Paul’s legacy lives on endlessly through his beautiful designs and huge retail empire that shall never be forgotten.