“I came up with the idea about six months ago,” designer Manish Arora said explaining The Lion King meets Jungle Book theme for his Fall/Winter 2009 collection. Set to the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, the crowds packed like sardines to see the collection opened by an African dance performer and that continued with spectacular designs. It was only so long before a designer would take the shoulders trend into the hourglass silhouette. Arora showed aggressively sculpted shoulders, often with an armor-like piece arching from front to back, that were balanced by volume at the hip narrowing to the knee. Some of the intensely beaded lion and jungle flower dresses and skirts were obviously difficult to walk in and the Raphael Young space-age towering heels didn’t help, but wearability really wasn’t the point.

Arora has quickly established himself as an original conceptualist and his artful patterns, in this case interweaving African motifs, cartoon patterns (through a collaboration with Disney) and exotic flowers, were exciting as they were new. There was also plenty of showmanship to spare. A cut-out and sparkly antlered deer protruded from the center of an equally sparkly red dress and there were battery-operated moving flowers on the finale dress. It was meeting of art and fashion that hasn’t been seen in quite some jaded time, and it was nice to see collaborators such as MAC, Reebok and the latest, Pommery, supporting such a creative designer. Originality doesn’t come cheap. By Bee Shyuan Chang. Photos by Ronen Shapiro