What's The Colour of Mumbai? Rid Burman Has An Answer

In Chop Suey, Bruce Weber said that photographers should "photograph things they can never be". Fashion photographer Rid Burman who has spent the career capturing fashion may have something to disagree with Weber. If anything, the photographer has spent his working life photographing a world he already lives in, and his wardrobe makes the case.

"My style is more about workwear," adds Burman. "I love things that have the idea of grit and hustle, things you wear for a long time that morph with you, telling a piece of your story."

The chore jacket and the barrel denims are what he reaches for first. It is the same eye that lingers in his pictures on a pre-monsoon sky turning heavy, the last light breaking over dark water, the salt-worn face of a building by the sea. All mood and weather, very little polish.

That sensibility explains why a collaboration with Bombay Shirt Company, a brand known for sharp tailoring, made sense to him. "I am actually a big fan of Bombay Shirt Company," Burman says.

"Every few months I get a couple of shirts made by them." The idea of precision and attention to detail, he adds, carries over into his own work as a photographer and filmmaker. "So in that retrospect, it's a nice match."

The result is What is the Colour of Mumbai?-- a capsule collection that grew out of four of Burman's photographs. Rather than printing the images onto fabric, the team used them as a guide to source cloth, test dye washes and shape relaxed silhouettes. Burman is clear that this was the point. The indirect route felt truer to the pictures. "It needed to be more inspired rather than direct," he says. "We needed to translate a feeling, hence the processes made sense."

Translating a feeling meant pulling BSC out of its comfort zone. Founder Akshay Narvekar has said the project took the brand into looser, rawer territory, with more workwear than it has ever done, wider proportions, chore jackets and distressed finishes. Burman describes the process as unusually frictionless.

"It was a beautiful rally, actually. Both BSC and I deeply respected each other's spaces, so there was nothing to push." The brand, he says, was "extremely open to discovering a new feeling."

There is a personal thread running through it too. Burman has lived in cities across the world and has spoken of spending years feeling like an outsider before colour became his way of belonging in Mumbai. Asked whether the collection changed that, he frames it as a thank-you. "In a way it was a homage to my belonging in Mumbai. This city has given me everything, so drafting this collection was more of an extension of the attachment I feel towards the city."

The palette follows the city's skyline from day into night. Deep tones like Moonless Night, Mystic Navy and Eclipse anchor the range, softened by Silver Grey, Burnished Lilac, Dusty Blue and Dusty Pink, with Sunlight and Sunburst adding flashes of warmth. Ask Burman for his own shade and he doesn't reach for the gold of Mumbai dusk. He picks something moodier. "The washed grey, with a touch of green, reminds me of the monsoon waves crashing against the concrete blocks," he says, "and then there's the slight residue of the moss or seaweed."

The range covers structured chore jackets, vintage-washed denim shackets, soft overshirts, barrel-fit jeans, military-inspired fatigue pants, acid-washed hoodies and oversized tees. Each carries subtle embroidery, distressed finishes and Burman's photographic work worked into the garment. Caps and tote bags round it out. The campaign was shot guerrilla-style on real people in the street, a nod, Burman says, to the city's everyday hustle and its knack for making things work.

What is the Colour of Mumbai? is available on Bombay Shirt Company's website and at select stores in Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Pune.