Style and Substance

We met her recently at the Lloyd OSM Awards in Delhi hosted by Outlook, dressed in a sharp green Nikhil Thampi pantsuit. “It was a nice change for me, to hear what politicians and Mr Bachchan had to say; it was a great event.” The lithe and elegant Pernia Qureshi, stylist, dancer, actress, and now full-time fashion entrepreneur is literally to the manor born. She attended her first fashion show while she was still at boarding school. “I was very young, and fashion week had just started in Delhi,” she says. “It was a Rajesh Pratap show, and I had gone with my mum.” Pernia always looked up to her mother, Nasreen, as a child. “It was like growing up with a real-life Barbie doll,” says Pernia. “She’s beautiful now in her 50s but in her 20s she was breathtaking. As a child, I would admire her, and stare at her while she was getting ready.”  

For Pernia, her mother’s opinion was everything. “She would talk about Tarun (Tahiliani) a lot, and she admired him as an artist and designer,” she says. She loved attending the designer’s shows, and even got custom-made outfits for a family wedding in Pakistan. “Mom introduced my sister and I to that world.” Slowly, Pernia grew fond of this style universe and took to it, attending her first couture show in Paris while she was in college at Georgetown in Washington DC. She also did a lot of internships, which cemented her work ethic, and opened up the doors for the various opportunities that came her way. “My first internship was covering New York Fashion Week for NDTV,” says Pernia. She got a criminal justice major with a minor in English literature as she wanted to be a lawyer, but every summer or winter break would be divided between fashion internships at places like Harper’s Bazaar US and coming home to India, where she would practice dance during the day (she’s a trained kuchipudi dancer). While in India after graduation, she got the chance to intern at Harper’s Bazaar India, and soon found that she was too experienced for the job. Fortuitously, she met Rhea Kapoor who was looking for a stylist for her upcoming film Aisha (2010) (the LA-based stylist who had been hired had date clashes), and she was hired. “I had no idea what a line sheet was, or what a costume breakdown was.  I just went and figured it out,” she said. 

Soon after, Pernia began her internet luxury retail portal, Pernia’s Pop-Up Shop, as there was nothing in the online retail space. “Because of Aisha and my internship, I had come across so many talented designers,” she says. She began with three people in a basement in Defence Colony, and the rest is history. Today she retails 500 designers, out of which there are 100 “active collections” with new products updated almost on a daily basis. “Shopping is addictive,” says Pernia. “People want to see something fresh every day.” She also nurtures young talent. “I’ve had designers work out of their homes. They didn’t have budgets for fashion week, and we did their marketing and social media, and now they are showcasing at fashion week,” she says. Some of the newer names to watch out for, as per Pernia, are Olio, that make “contemporary pret”, Jodi with print as their forte, and jewellery brands Misho and Purab Paschim. They’ve also had Amrapali from the very beginning. Her menswear is growing, with options from Suket Dhir and Kunal Rawal. Her eponymous label is a hot seller on the website. “It’s an extension of me. If I can’t find it, I will wear it,” she says. Right now she’s working on a user-friendly app for her retail presence, which make it “even quicker and easier to get what you’re looking for”.

And for those of us who’ve seen Jaanisar, by Muzaffar Ali, one wonders if she will reprise acting. “Acting was an extension of my dancing,” says Pernia. “I met Muzaffar sir after college, got to dance for his festival Jahan e Khusrau at Humayun’s tomb, and he told me about his film.” The film happened, and her most exciting moments were working with Pandit Birju Maharaj ji, on her kathak. “I’ve got offers since then, but I’m not open to do anything run-of-the-mill; I need to be inspired,” she says. 

At the moment, she’s looking forward to the wedding and festive seasons. “We’ve got Manish Malhotra lehengas with floral embroideries and capes,” she says. “Masaba’s festive range has bright pinks and dhoti skirts. We have classic Indianwear by Anju Modi because we cater to all age groups.” On the red carpet, she likes to don sexy silhouettes in black, white, beige, or pink, her favourite colours, and when she travels, it’s in skinny jeans and a T-shirt. Her goals are clear: “I would like us to be – a global player, that’s my dream,” she says. “For this website to be on the lines of big websites in the world. There are plenty of platforms for international designers. So why not promote people from my country who are doing as good or better a job?”