Gabriella Demetriades on her fashion show and the inputs she receives from partner Arjun Rampal

Gabriella Demetriades is gearing up for her upcoming fashion show. The South African model, and actor-turned-designer feels that the fashion scene in Mumbai is quite Bollywood driven and she wants to bring the focus on the models. Interestingly, her husband Arjun Rampal too has been a supermodel and she’s always inundated with requests to have him as a showstopper.
She tells us, “We are a little bit Bollywood-obsessed! If you don’t have a big actor as your showstopper then you don’t get a lot of press. So, as a designer, I want to give that shot to the models because we have such gorgeous models in India. I want the focus to be on the models and how good they look in the designs because that’s what sells internationally. I am rooting to break some stereotypes here.”

While both their career paths are distinct, recently, she joined hands with Arjun as she styled him for his last release Crakk. Ask her if she gets a helping hand from Arjun and she’s quick to add, “I get a lot of inputs from him. He will say things like, 'Oh, this one is going to be bestseller or that is an amazing design or I am not sure about this colour…', so he does definitely have an opinion, but do I listen to them (laughs)?”

About their latest collaboration Crakk where she styled him for the Aditya Datt directorial, Gabriella says, “He’s beyond satisfied with my work. Everybody on the sets loved the outfits too as they were trying to steal the clothes (laughs). I had sourced all of them from London. While work has often kept us away, this film was an opportunity where we got to spend more time with each other.”