The Soirée at the Grand Budapest Hotel — Black-Tie Reimagined
Photo : FS Media Pro / FDCI x Lakme Fashion Week / RISE Worldwid
At Lakmē Fashion Week x FDCI 2025, Ashish N Soni, in collaboration with R|Elan™, presented the critically acclaimed collection, “The Soirée at the Grand Budapest Hotel.”
The lights rose with cinematic precision, and the runway shifted into a world where geometry flirted with glamour — a soirée set within the stylish intrigue of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Ashish N Soni, a master of immaculate tailoring since 1991, brought his hallmark philosophy of “Less is More” into sharp focus. But this season, restraint came with a twist: innovation at the fibre level.
Reliance Industries’ R|Elan™ fabrics — GreenGold, EcoGold, Kooltex, FeelFresh — served as the hidden architecture of the collection. Their advanced breathability and lightness were felt before they were understood. You could see it in the way trousers puddled just right, how jackets held sculptural authority without stiffness, how gowns moved as though borrowed from a breeze.
The palette: unapologetically black.
The mood: controlled drama.
The energy: modern elegance with a quiet, confident burn.
Women stepped forward in cinched waists and shoulders carved like sculpture — bold but softened with intuitive draping. Their silhouettes commanded attention without demanding it. For men, Soni rewrote black-tie code with wide-leg tailoring and architectural jackets that shaped a new masculinity — sharper, freer, more dimensional.
Patterns appeared not as prints, but as shadows — textural conversations between light and depth. Every seam was a sentence; every fold, a breath.
“It’s evening wear as architecture in motion,” Ashish said, and the runway agreed. There was a precision in the way garments held structure while still speaking fluidly to the body. That duality — formal yet effortless, precise yet alive — defined the show’s magnetic pull.
R|Elan™ enabled the future-ready quality of each look. Sustainable fibres and high-performance textiles fused seamlessly with couture-level craftsmanship — proving that progress can look like poetry.
In the final tableau, the message crystallised:
Black isn’t absence.
Black is presence — saying everything in whispers.
