The James Bond girls - that was Rina Dhaka’s offering for the day. The mood was sexy, sassy, and very fun and the look was strongly one of fearless glamour, razzmatazz and crazy evenings on the beach doing the wild stuff. The ambience of Dhaka's collection was lusty in its flesh toned and ivory capris, bra tops, skirts and cat-suits. The focus was on slinky body fits achieved through stretch knit skirts that skimmed the waist and then erupted into gorgeous volumes. Little ra-ra skirts were worn with tights and easy blouses.

All her creations exuded a party driven 20s mood with their jazz music inspired sequining and fringing, and some Paco Rabanne style metal chain-mail looks. She topped it with a range of dresses and skirts that looked like granny's dresses had had a closet affair and got naughty. They were made of a myriad of antique looking fabrics patched together and embellished with laces, sequins, and plenty of glitter. The colours of this range were classic - ivory, sage, lavender and old rose. Her tribute to winter was a range of jackets, pants and skirts in ivory with melted chocolate embroidery and appliqué .

The strength of Dhaka's collection was its excellent texturization. There was beautiful sequining in silver and gold done to fish scale perfection, use of gold shimmer which is very strong for Spring-Summer 2005, delicately compact mushroom-underside like pleating and joyously colourful patchwork enhanced with wool baubles and seaming.

Also, she focused on the back- by making all of them bare, cleverly mixing an element of 1930's Hollywood glamour with racy spy- girl pizzaz. That's vintage Dhaka for you.

India Syndicate