Passion for fashion

A Sita Mikhail garment is a combination of quality, substance, style and great craftsmanship and has an interesting story making them great conversation starters at special occasions. Well, the self-made and self-taught designer has a knack for designing clothes that are both fashionable and practical.

Looking back
Born and brought up in Secunderabad, Sita did most of her schooling there. “As I was adopted, my parents were quite elderly so my bringing up was partly done by my brother and sister-in-law, because of which I studied some part in Pilani, Rajasthan. I believe this helped in a varied cultural experience in my early childhood days, which I think built in a broad perspective within me. Then we all came to Bengaluru and I did my college here. I studied Home Science which covered a wide variety of subjects, fashion being one of them.” Sita graduated from Mount Carmel College in Bengaluru and then pursued her Masters’ degree in nutrition and dietetics.

“As a child, I was always inclined towards art and designing, and I guess my Home Science graduation laid a good foundation of what I could be doing as a career. After her marriage with Mikhail, Sita was still working as a Nutritionist in a reputed organisation but soon realised this was not her calling.

“With great support from my husband we started our fashion brand as Mock Orange, where along with in-house production we also curated stuff from Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Banaras.” After successfully completing four years of running Mock Orange, Sita wanted a label that makes luxury clothing for women that signalled the birth of her eponymous brand.

Fashion forward
One year ago, the couple refined their brand and wanted to concentrate just on in-house production. This is when the Sita-Mikhail label was started. “With this, I knew I could finally unleash my creativity in design, something that was exciting and new for me, where I could think out of the box,” says Sita.

A year after Sita's urge to do something different spurred her and Mikhail to apply for the Lakme Fashion Week. Sita and Mikhail got selected for Lakme Fashion week in 2018 through the 6-degree Studio. Her collection 'Mirror tells a tale' is a unique creation of using stained glass embroidery which has been done for the first time in the world on garments, putting together interesting structured silhouettes, giving the whole collection a vintage twist. “I was fascinated by the stained glass on architecture and I wanted to use them on the ensembles we created. I love playing with structural elements in a garment, making it edgy, different and bold.

The stained-glass embroidery can be translated to a wide variety of designs which I intend to do with the future collections also.” She is inspired by everything from nature to architecture, serene places like hills beaches where her heart is. She counts on her family and her husband as her greatest support and says florals and pastels will be the new bridal trends.

“Brides are experimental and cholis with jackets and ankle-length skirts for mehendi/sangeet are my favourite for a modern bride.” Outside of work she is a fitness freak and loves lifting weights and doing dance-based workouts. “Our future plans are just to work hard and grab all good opportunities that come our way. Hope God is generous to us,” she signs off.

- Bindu Gopal Rao