Considered one of Manish Arora’s most sentimental clothes might shock you. Alongside all of the designer’s glittering more-is-more maximalist robes lined in baroque-like gilding and a paradise of hand-embellishment is an easy fuschia button-down shirt. Stamped with small however mighty silver metallic florals–it debuted at one in all his first collections within the late Nineteen Nineties and was owned by one in all his late nice associates, Catherine Levy, who at all times joked that she’d sooner or later give the shirt to a museum. And so, her want grew to become actuality when the exhibition Manish Arora: Life Is Lovely opened at SCAD FASH Museum of Vogue + Movie in Atlanta this week. It’s the primary main retrospective for the designer–and one of many uncommon few solo vogue exhibitions devoted to an Indian vogue legend who’s work, in his personal phrases, “may solely be designed by an Indian designer.”

Identified for his iconic statements like “pink and gold are my faith,” Arora has been creating wearable maximalist fantasies because the late Nineteen Nineties. Suppose: colorfully textured items layered with references as remote as Burning Man to the trance dance events of Goa. It’s excessive, decadent and opulent; it is further. Starting within the early 2000s, Arora grew to become one of many first main Indian designers to point out at London Vogue Week and Paris Vogue Week–additionally taking up a brief stint as inventive director of Paco Rabanne within the early 2010s. His affect is broad–dressing the likes of Katy Perry, Girl Gaga, Nicki Minaj and extra–and standing in as one of the vital excessive and over-the-top designers in Paris for years.

Together with Rafael Gomes, director of vogue exhibitions at SCAD FASH, Arora painstakingly contacted his largest collectors and shoppers all through the years to safe items for the present. “It was enjoyable to get in contact with folks I haven’t spoken to for 15 years,” Arora tells Vogue. “Lots of people have been very enthusiastic, lots of people weren’t positive, however in the long run, I feel we did very properly.”

Sitting inside SCAD’s museum on a cool Atlanta afternoon—his nails painted gold, his fingers stacked with fistfuls of glimmering gold rings, his outfit barely metallic and layered with tailoring—he explains that many of the items within the present are, in actual fact, one-of-a-kind. “A few of these items, I did not even personal,” he says. “I didn’t accumulate my archives so we received collectively and received in contact with folks and received them. These items are like nothing that you’ll ever discover anyplace else.” One instance? A Paris-themed rainbow skirt depicting the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and the Moulin Rouge’s well-known Can-Can dance in motion, amongst different landmarks. It’s chain stitched by hand–approximating hours and hours and hours of labor, akin to couture-level vogue. “It’s typical cliche Paris, however it’s one in all my favourite items,” he says. “It was not possible to breed, so there’s just one.”

Contained in the exhibition, a feast for the eyes manifests within the type of totally different dream-like eventualities. There’s a dessert-themed wall anchored by crystal-covered ice cream cones and cupcakes, and a fantasy part, flanked with imagery of pastel skies and floating material castles. The present is split into 13 themes that finest symbolize the designer’s physique of labor. There’s additionally a uncommon glimpse into his legendary jewellery items–which play with concepts of conventional ceremonial costume and whimsy (pineapples, gingerbread homes and unicorns abound). On the partitions, there are archive and childhood images of Arora himself with hand-written notes: “My first time in drag,” one reads. A purse formed like a milkshake, a Swarovski crystal costume rendered of jigsaw puzzle items and a floor-length robe full with a prepare and composed solely out of leather-like butterflies. There’s a lot to see.