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India Couture Week 2025 Kicks Off In Delhi On July 23 With Rahul Mishra Show

India Couture Week 2025 Kicks Off In Delhi On July 23 With Rahul Mishra Show

NDTV17 hours ago
The 18th edition of the India Couture Week will kick off in the national capital Delhi on July 23. The fashion extravaganza will go on for a week, with the closing ceremony on July 30.
Who All Are Part Of India Couture Week
The seven-day gala will see fashion showcases from ace designers like Rahul Mishra, JJ Valaya, Manish Malhotra, Ritu Kumar, Tarun Tahiliani, Amit Aggarwal, Falguni Shane Peacock, Shantnu & Nikhil, Suneet Verma, Rimzim Dadu, Jayanti Reddy, Rose Room by Isha Jajodia and Aisha Rao.
Opening Presentation By Rahul Mishra
Hyundai India Couture Week 2025, in association with Reliance Brands, an initiative of the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), will open with a spectacular presentation by Rahul Mishra. The celebrated fashion designer has just made waves in Paris with his show titled "Becoming Love," where he paid a tribute to the seven stages of love, with creations inspired by 20th-century Austrian artist Gustav Klimt's works.
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Speaking about the upcoming showcase, Rahul Mishra said in a press note, "Every time we showcase in India, it fills us with immense pride to present our work on home soil, where the roots of our craft run deepest. Opening Hyundai India Couture Week 2025 with FDCI is an honour, and this collection feels especially personal. It explores the idea of love not just as a feeling, but as a transformation and a journey of becoming. Through every ensemble, we attempt to express that quiet surrender, where craft, emotion, and soul dissolve into one."
Grand Finale By JJ Valaya
The final show of the India Couture Week will be by couturier JJ Valaya.
JJ Valaya, whose signature style lies in his ability to merge traditional elements with contemporary aesthetics, told ANI last week, "I've always been a firm believer that, any kind of art or craft or design, the design speaks much more than the creator. And in this case also, I think it's the same thing. Whilst I can tell you that it's called East and the inspiration is based on various parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. But I believe that when we work eight months to put together a 25-minute presentation, it all comes together beautifully in that experience. So I think I'm going to let the collection speak for itself."
Excited about having JJ Valya closing the show, Sunil Sethi, Chairman, FDCI, said, "JJ Valaya has been a visionary in the world of Indian couture, and we are honoured to have him close Hyundai India Couture Week 2025. His deep-rooted legacy, exquisite detailing, and timeless designs make him the perfect designer to conclude this landmark edition. His closing showcase will undoubtedly be a fitting crescendo to a week celebrating India's finest craftsmanship and creative brilliance."
The India Couture Week 2025 will be held from July 23 to July 31 at the Taj Palace Hotel in New Delhi. This is the 18th edition of the fashion festival.
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‘Mahavatar Narsimha' interview: Director Ashwin Kumar on building India's first animated cinematic universe
‘Mahavatar Narsimha' interview: Director Ashwin Kumar on building India's first animated cinematic universe

The Hindu

time15 minutes ago

  • The Hindu

‘Mahavatar Narsimha' interview: Director Ashwin Kumar on building India's first animated cinematic universe

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'All the archetypes are already present here, and they've been drawn from us by the world out there.' Films like Jiaozi's Ne Zha 2 have already proven that culturally anchored narratives told through local aesthetics can not only move audiences but also make a killing at the global box office. Meanwhile, Usman Riaz's The Glassworker has demonstrated how intimate hand-drawn animation can become a cultural milestone. And so, the goal for Ashwin isn't technical parity with the West, rather a sense of spiritual clarity. 'We should inherit the West's standards of quality, and maybe even go beyond,' he adds. The core of his vision is the persistent belief that India deserves world-class animation and is entirely capable of creating it on its own terms. 'We do have a lot of talent here,' he says. 'But we do not quite have a doctrined animation industry like Japan, the United States, Korea or China. And it's about time we step up.' 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Technically, the film is stitched together through a combination of industry standards and open-source ingenuity. Ashwin initially experimented with Blender — the free-to-use software that was made to produce last year's Oscar-winning Latvian indie, Flow — but struggled to find artists trained in it. Eventually, the animation was executed in Maya, effects in Houdini, and everything rendered back into Blender and composited in Nuke. 'We had to tailor-make the pipeline,' he says. 'And by the next film, we'll have more open-source software to bring the costs down. Maybe even integrate AI tools for faster production.' This piecemeal, problem-solving approach has become a defining trait of Mahavatar Narsimha's production. Ashwin names a few early collaborators — his producer Shilpaa Dhawan, and the studio behind K.G.F., Salaar and Kantara, Hombale Films — who helped keep the project afloat during two COVID waves and beyond. 'They believed it could happen. That really means a lot to me.' As someone who came into animation through theatre, choreography, music, and storytelling, Ashwin credits his spiritual journey as the thread that ties it all together. 'I've been into art all my life,' he says. 'But I think it all came down to one epiphany — my spiritual awakenings. That manifested into what we are seeing today.' So what does success look like? Ashwin seems more interested in how the film may resonate culturally over how it performs at the box office. 'I want people to see the astute faith of Prahlada,' he says. 'To carry an iota of that with them into their lives.' His tastes are telling. His favourite Indian animation? The iconic 1993 Indo-Japanese Ramayana. 'That's an epic in my mind.' From the West, it's the original 1994 Lion King that left its mark. And from beyond that, he singles out Kentaro Miura's cult-classic Berserk. 'One of my all-time favourites,' he says. Despite the challenges of building a team, a pipeline, and a belief, Ashwin seems pleasantly undeterred. If anything, the ambition behind the Mahavatar universe feels almost provocative. Can Indian animation finally tell its own stories, on its own scale, with its own sense of mythic grandeur? 'It's never been done before,' he says. 'But Bharat is the place that does it.' Mahavatar Narsimha hits theatres on July 25

Writer Gideon Haigh on the foremost rivalry in cricket today
Writer Gideon Haigh on the foremost rivalry in cricket today

Mint

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  • Mint

Writer Gideon Haigh on the foremost rivalry in cricket today

A line cricket fans and writers love to quote is Trinidadian historian and Marxist scholar C.L.R. James' 'What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?" James meant that in order to properly appreciate the game of cricket, one has to consider the historical and sociopolitical conditions under which the game is played. No contemporary writer proves this dictum more often or more thoroughly than the 59-year-old Australian Gideon Haigh, author of some of the finest cricket books of the 21st century, including The Big Ship: Warwick Armstrong and the Making of Modern Cricket (2001), Mystery Spinner: The Life and Death of an Extraordinary Cricketer (2002), On Warne (2012) and Sultan: A Memoir (2022, co-written with Wasim Akram). A prolific writer who began his career as a business journalist in the 1980s, Haigh's body of work is diverse—several true crime books, a history of the workplace, an account of the legalization of abortion in Australia. Westland has recently published his latest book, Indian Summers: Australia Versus India, a collection of essays covering what has grown to be arguably the foremost rivalry in contemporary cricket. These essays cover nearly a century of Indo-Australian cricketing encounters, starting with Frank Tarrant's touring party of 1935-36 and going all the way till the 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy played in Australia. All the big, familiar moments for Indian fans—the 2001 Kolkata Test, the 2003 and 2023 ODI World Cup Finals, the 2024 T20 World Cup game—are covered here. These big-game essays show both Haigh's appetite for the 'it' moments and his full suite of writerly skills. Today, it is common to use the word 'cinematic" while talking about writers who're adept at building dramatic tension with flair and visual details. But Haigh's technique is more akin to classical theatre than contemporary filmmaking (he quotes the Nobel-winning playwright and lifelong cricket nut Harold Pinter in a passage about Indian batter Cheteshwar Pujara). His essay about the 2001 Kolkata Test, for instance, drips with Shakespearean foreshadowing. In a particularly striking passage, Haigh describes the overconfidence of the Australian team after day three of the five-day game—as is well-known by now, at this point, India was still trailing Australia's score narrowly, with 4 second-innings wickets already down by the end of day three. While reading this passage (reproduced below), I could clearly visualize Steve Waugh, Michael Slater and Tony Greig in different corners of a large theatre stage, a spotlight shining above whichever head is talking in the moment: ''It'll be over tomorrow,' commentator Tony Greig said airily. 'More time on the golf course.' The Australians were of the same mind. Waugh eyed his Southern Comfort thirstily. Slater, who had nursed some reservations about the follow- on, playfully drew his cigar under his nose. 'This result is so close I can smell it,' he said, to the amusement of Gilchrist, who had not in his eighteen months as a Test cricketer known defeat." For me, though, where Haigh stands out from the crowd is his clear-eyed diagnosis of cricket's ongoing "Big Three" era, wherein India, England and Australia (and within them, mostly India) have hoovered up the lion's share of global cricketing revenues, hosting rights and programming privileges. Haigh's criticism of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is brutal (Haigh has an acid tongue) and I would argue, relentlessly fair. See how he calmly and systematically dismantles the oft-parroted argument that, as the number one generator of revenue in world cricket, India is in fact entitled to the lion's share (Ravi Shastri recently argued on Sky Sports that India is being underpaid by the rest of the cricketing world): 'As is the case for every ICC member, India in international cricket is the creation of generations of tours and tournaments, of rivalries and reciprocities, fostered by the whole world. No country can accomplish anything on its own in international cricket, and every country contributes. Some, for reasons of economy and demography, cannot offer so much. The objective should always be to put a floor beneath and handholds beside the weakest because from a generally rising standard everyone benefits—I'd call it 'levelling up', had Boris Johnson not, like everything he ever touched, debased it." 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Cricket has its own enduring counterpart: No Politics Please, We're the ICC. Its hilarious premise is that the International Cricket Council is charged with preventing the game's contamination by ill-defined but somehow always untoward political influence. This has now extended to…checks notes…a fucking dove." Indian Summers is a must-read for hardcore and casual cricket fans alike. It showcases the best of a man whose writings have described the game with wit, wisdom and humility for over three decades now. Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based journalist.

BTS V and Jungkook 'aura legends'? TaeKook's viral 'Aura Farmer' dance gets approval from Indonesia's Tourism Ministry
BTS V and Jungkook 'aura legends'? TaeKook's viral 'Aura Farmer' dance gets approval from Indonesia's Tourism Ministry

Time of India

time15 minutes ago

  • Time of India

BTS V and Jungkook 'aura legends'? TaeKook's viral 'Aura Farmer' dance gets approval from Indonesia's Tourism Ministry

What began as a spontaneous Instagram Live inside a car, quickly went on to become a full-blown cultural moment, as BTS' Kim Taehyung aka V and Jungkook - affectionately known as TaeKook - once again captured the internet's full attention. The youngest BTS duo went live from a car, laughing, vibing, and casually setting social media on fire. But the real standout moment came when the two broke into the viral "Aura Farmer" dance which has grabbed the attention of Indonesia's Ministry of Tourism. The dance, originally created by 11-year-old Indonesian boy Rayyan Arkan Dhika - who recently shot to internet fame for his energetic moves on a speeding boat during the traditional Pacu Jalur festival - quickly found its way into TaeKook's Live. Fans wasted no time clipping the moment, but the real surprise came from an unexpected source. BTS V and Jungkook are 'aura legends' Indonesia's official Ministry of Tourism caught wind of the viral moment and didn't hesitate to jump in. Sharing the clip on their official Instagram page, they dubbed the two global superstars "aura legends," much to the delight of Indonesian ARMYs and K-pop fans worldwide. The official account of Indonesia's Ministry of Tourism on Instagram shared clip from Taehyung's Instagram live doing the viral aura farming dance'@.thv and @.mnijungkook = aura legends 💥' The post marked a rare and playful moment of government engagement in fan culture - one that elevated a simple dance challenge into an international headline. BTS V's playlist for the TaeKook live Amid all this, Taehyung's music taste stood out, curating a mellow vibe with a playlist that included: Utopia by ODIE, Sinner by Samara Cyn, Darlin' by Jean Dawson, Passenger Princess by Aminé & Smino, Western by and angie by Humbe the Great. BTS comeback countdown begins All seven members - RM, Jin, SUGA, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook - officially completed their mandatory military service by June 21, 2025, and are now setting the stage for a powerful return. The group is currently in Los Angeles, actively working on their upcoming album. On July 1, BTS reunited for their first full-member OT7 live broadcast since 2022. During the Weverse livestream, they opened up about their recent two-month training camp in the U.S. and confirmed that a long-awaited spring 2026 album is in development - with a global tour set to follow. For all the latest K-drama, K-pop, and Hallyuwood updates, keep following our coverage here.

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