She’s been picked by New York’s Surface magazine as one of the five most promising designers from around the world. Making waves in Melbourne this past year and hailed as ‘the next big thing’ in three consecutive Australian Fashion Weeks is Sri Lankan designer Dhini Pararajasingham.
 |
| Dhini featured in the March 2008 issue of theage (melbourne) magazine |
Born in Sri Lanka, Dhini’s early fascination with fashion came at her grandmother’s hands as she stitched clothes for Dhini and her twin sister’s dolls.
Then one day watching an Yves St. Laurent catwalk show on TV, fired Dhini’s imagination and fuelled her desire to make it to the fashion scene.
But when her family left the island when the girls were eight it was to a more conventional path that she was steered. “I am a lawyer and I wanted Dhini to do law,” her father A.E. Pararajasingham told The Sunday Times.
After years spent in India, Europe and the US, they moved to Australia and Dhini went to Monash and completed a Marketing degree. Her first job though seemed to confirm her reservations and she set her sights on following RMIT’s Bachelor of Fashion design course.
But there was a great deal of hard work and unflagging determination along the way. She went off to Japan to teach English in Tokyo and learnt design in between at a Yokohama fashion school. In 2000, she made it to RMIT where she managed to walk away with the most promising student award. Then it was off to London to work with cutting edge design firm Boudicca. Two collections in London and it seemed the time was right for her to launch in Melbourne where fashion houses were all beginning to take note of her work.
Working tirelessly with a small team from her North Balwyn home, Dhini has seen awards and accolades steadily piling up. Last year, she was a finalist in the Tiffany designer awards and had the distinction of being picked as Fashion Week’s ‘new generation star’.
Leading newspapers and fashion magazines in Australia have been quick to highlight Dhini’s rising star.
Writing in the spring/summer issue of Australia’s Fashion Trend magazine Lisa Zamberlain describes Dhini’s work in lavish terms. “Dhini’s profiles, from her earliest collections have represented a body-conscious approach to tailoring, a reinvention of the silhouette accentuated with strong and individual expression.
“The collections describe a contemporary and bespoke armour created around the idea of a very delicate feminine form. The depiction is of a fragility underscored with a brave new world of reinvented shapes.
Panels draw on the silhouette and carve up the body playing up unlikely sections and creating alternate shapes via some out of sight tailoring. Recalling the inventive crafting of designers like Rei Kawakubo, Azzdeine Alaia and Roberto Tisci for Givenchy, this lady aims for fine company,” Zamberlain writes.
The Dhini Couture label is in stores and the 33-year-old designer is now in the midst of a new collection with jeweller Julia deVille. From the looks of it, we’re going to see a lot more of Dhini’s exciting talent.
 |
| Blue dress by Dhini appearing in
FASHION TREND |
|
|
| 2 designs (left and right) in the double spread devoted to Dhini in the spring/summer issue of Australia’s Fashion Trend magazine |
|
|
E-mail