As an inspiration for a luxury suitmaker like Canali, India serves a useful dual purpose: It addresses an important growing market and gives the design team a chance to play with color and pattern. Things started conventionally enough with a series of suits, one in a dusty rose tone-on-tone stripe, others in checks or seersucker. Traditional silk scarves peeked out from under lapels. Then the perspective shifted eastward. Those scarves exploded into ever more extravagant pattern, Nehru collars replaced notch lapels, and one model toted a canvas bag printed with an image of Ganesh. It culminated in a parade of orange and pink, turquoise and emerald green, as well as a tableau of embroidered and beaded alterna-tuxes. Everything was finished with the Canali precision and attention to detail, even if this kind of Western embrace of Eastern motifs already feels slightly rote by now.
