Daring Dhini

As home to Australia's internationally renowned design talents, including Sass and Bide, Colette Dinnigan, and Tsubi, Sydney gets all the buzz. But on our most recent trip Down Under, we flew south to Melbourne and discovered Dhini Pararajasingham, whose cerebral construction techniques for her three-year-old womenswear label Dhini, are earning her "it" designer status.

The Sri-Lanka born, RMIT- (the Australian equivalent to Central Saint Martins or Parsons the New School for Design) trained designer says, "I get inspired by things as diverse as a form of architecture, a movement in art, or a piece of music, the shape and structure of an everyday object, theories and concepts, or words by writers like Huxley or Kafka." This may sound highfalutin to some, but it's just the aesthetic concept Pararajasingham preaches that attracted the famously brainy London-based label, Boudicca, to employ her as a design assistant in 2004. "What I learned at Boudicca was to be brave. Learning alongside them taught me to complete this journey of innovation and create change, no matter how challenging that journey becomes," says Pararajasingham of the experience.

For a/w '07, Pararajasingham's third and most recent Dhini collection translates Boudicca's maverick spirit into a collection rooted in what she dubbed "ReConstructed Tailoring." According to her, it's the conceptual opposite of deconstruction, and involves taking apart a classic garment and repositioning its various parts (sleeves, collars, etc.) to form a whole new piece. Though the collection is complex in practice — spawning striking separates such as a pencil skirt with a slight bustle that references a blouse's collar, slouchy shorts with a trompe l'oeil illusion that they're falling off, and multi-tiered cropped jackets that have hints of Viktor and Rolf's playful trickery — easy-to-wear dresses with tempered hints of eccentricity are also present. A red dress gathered high at the waist, producing a slight volume, is made sexier by a lasciviously cut V-neck top, while the austerity of a cream dress with many distended folds is foiled by large floral prints, a result of a collaboration with a graffiti artist. While clever tailoring is the Dhini signature, the fabrics used in the collection are not to be ignored. "I prefer luxurious-looking natural fibers that have richness in texture and weave. So in this collection I've used rich Italian wools, one in woven hound's-tooth and another twill; wool-viscose blends in a type of pique weave; a herringbone cashmere-silk blend; an extremely delicate silk-cotton voile; and sleek water-repellent cottons for my trenches," Pararajasingham explains.

In 2003, Dhini Pararajasingham's graduation collection from RMIT was awarded the Alice Euphemia Most Promising Student Award. Since then, she has gone on to show during the London and Paris fashion weeks, and started selling at United Arrows in Tokyo. Clearly, Dhini is ripe for exporting to the international fashion scene. But when asked what's next for her brand, Pararajasingham says with circumspection, "In the short term, for my next season I'd like to continue to show from Australia and focus on the local market. In deciding to take the collection overseas, timing is so important. A collection has to be ready for the new market, or it can be a wasted effort." Unlike many young designers with hopes of global expansion, Dhini Pararajasingham sees patience as a virtue.
-Robert Cordero

Photos:
Dhini a/w '07