emmagem had the privilege of a long distance telcon interview with Jattinn recently at his design studio.

We talked about his latest development and also about the fashion industry in general, MIFW and his philosophy about life. This multi-talented designer, not just designs clothes , but he paints and exhibits in his spare time and he is also involved in  all kinds of ventures; next year he will be going to Japan for a fellowship.  He has won many accolades and awards in India for his work as  a designer, (he won the Lycra Design Partner Award consecutively for the last four years)  , for his  charity works and contribution in academics of fashion. He has anchored and guest anchored television shows where his styling and conceptualizing was involved.  Jattinn also writes on fashion and lifestyle related topics for some leading dailies on fashion and lifestyle like the Hindustan Times and Times of India. His corporate clients’ list reads like the Who’s Who of white collar India.

This self taught designer who designs  for the A listers but also  finds it equally if not  more challenging and fulfilling when he is able to design for people  from all walks of life and all shapes and sizes ,which is why he takes on designing highly specialized uniform projects with some of the more important companies in New Delhi like the EMRI (Emergency Medical Research Institute) , their equivalent to 911 or Malaysia’s 991.

Jattinn has been in the industry for 17 years and it is quite  amazing to learn that he had no formal training in this field. He literally just went  out , bought a sewing machine and set up shop in the basement of his house after failing to get support from his family to study fashion in Florida which he had secretly applied to  and was accepted by the Fashion Institute of Florida. His family refused to pay for him to  be a woman’s tailor , well guess they must be real proud now though.

Jattinn’s future as a designer  came about when at 10th grade he found himself not having a purpose for his future. He only knew that he wanted to make people and places look nice, so he thought he might try interior designing. But his fate was actually already sealed when his family shifted to Singapore (they were planning on applying for Permanent Residence Status) and lived on Orchard Road for  a year. So he was literally ”window shopping ” everyday from his home. In Singapore, his favorite hang out was The Sub Station , an art Center – a bazaar of sorts for young artist and there he put together  a collection and he got fantastic response for it. So upon his  return to India and when he faced the crossroads of adulthood and career, it was quite natural to choose  fashion as opposed to interior design.

Jattinn  started his first collection at the age of 19 years old . He would make his cousins model his clothes and he called all the publications and  introduced his work to all the  editors. He is really glad they were not as nasty as reputed and helped him a lot. By the age of 21, he had his first world tour , in India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Brazil and Australia and there was no looking back. In India,  he got hold of a pamphlet  of the  Australian Fashion Framework which  promotes Australian talents , models, photography and designing overseas  and they usually have one guest designer from a Commonwealth country when they showed . So he got in  touch with them and mailed them pictures of his work which was evaluated by the Director of Australian Fashion Framework and the Editor of Vogue Australia came to his show which  lead to his showcasing across the globe.

Jatinn and his models at MIFW recently.

An observer of  the world around him , Jattinn designs for self realization. His designs are modern minimalist and the details are punctuated with the Indian elements that he shows ever so subtlety in each piece, to honor his Indian heritage and differentiate his work from  the rest of the other designers. He strongly encourages this of other designers because with such elements not only is he showing his roots but ensuring that a shirt is just not a shirt but a Jattinn Kochhar shirt. According to him , especially when showing abroad is when he most uses these elements which the market would like to see.

He says the simplest things to design but yet the hardest would probably be a simple white shirt, because there is just no chance of a technical error, and which his why, he laughingly said  he does not do white shirts! His clothes are mostly in black and  grey which is unlike other designers in India who fully utilize the myriads of colour in their country .

Jattinn ‘s Thoughts

Trivia – Father of two , most productive at night  and luckily for by laws on employees and sobriety of age and responsibility otherwise he would have them work midnight to daylight, he jests.” …Parenthood has taught me patience and I have also learnt to accept things the way they are …”  He studied Buddhism and is empowered to be a good person first. He says too many people in this industry can be very mean maybe because of the fragile ego but he believes being good first attracts one to similar thinking people across the globe.

Fashion weeks – The recent MIFW was very tightly organized as he had hoped, for he met loads of like minded creative  people from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, China, Australia, Pakistan, Russia and Malaysia.

“…. in India , the Press is very supportive of fashion and art events and it would have been nicer if I got to interact with the Malaysian media to get their response on my work ”.

His opinion for future fashion weeks in Kuala Lumpur – “…it needs to be timed slightly earlier than the rest of the international fashion weeks so more international buyers and press can be invited resulting in a win win situation for the organizers and the participants.”

He himself proactively googled and got in touch with some publications in Malaysia for his recent trip here. In India, there are two fashion weeks, the “Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week New Delhi”, where the organizers are more business savvy and  there are usually more buyers than the “Mumbai Fashion Week”. Personally he feels that both  fashion weeks complement and is good to have  both.

“What I enjoy most about the shows are meeting up with people from different cultures and understanding them… For instance, when I met Ding Yong at MIFW , I thought he was rather aloof as he did not respond to my attempts at conversation, later I found out that it was because he did not understand English well. I am glad I found that out, otherwise I would have carried the wrong impression around about him … Another amusing instance was when Ding Yong found that I was from India via his interpreter,  he got really excited and referred to me as hindoo and not by my name cause he found it difficult to pronounce it…”

Mumbai Bomb blast -”I was personally affected as we lost a friend there. The incident  shook the whole nation  The design fraternity had a peace march,  lit candles and pledged to continue putting our  best foot forward… ”

Future plans

Grow my children ‘s clothing line  under the Jattinn Kochhar label.

Personal ambition

If every person in India would own one or two pieces of Jattinn Kochhar , I would consider myself having done a great job!

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