Art meets aviation; avant-garde meets handcrafted; the past meets the future for "The Airmen Collective"

MUMBAI: Art, Fashion and Aviation came together in a deeply cool collaboration between Arjun Khanna (AK Atelier) and Akshay Sharma (WoodFeather) as they unveiled "The Airmen Collective" at Café Zoe.

The talented actor Meezaan Jaffrey who is set to make his Bollywood debut in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's next "Malaal" - was the showstopper for the event. Glorious masculinity blended seamlessly with the tunes of Ryan Sadri’s saxophone.

This dreamy homage to aviation style was cheered on by Kailash Kher, Manish Paul, Anil Chopra, Umesh Jivnani, Ira Khan and Vikram Raizada. The uber cool sundowner served gin cocktails by Stranger & Sons and beer by Hoegaarden.

Akshay and Arjun, lend their bold interpretation of aviation to a limited edition, 16-piece collection of luxurious propellers and vintage fashion. While Arjun and Akshay’s meeting was serendipitous, their collaboration is far from accidental. All it will take is one look at their collaboration, the importance of handcrafting and the hard work that underlines their individual crafts, for anyone to see how they were destined to meet.

Here is what the avant gardes have to say about their collections: Arjun Khanna, "Denim, Vintage and Camouflage have always been themes very close to my heart and a personal design style. All three have come together really beautifully for The Airmen Collective collection.

I collect vintage and retro clothing, old leather and flight jackets and vintage denim from the 60s, 70s and 80s - so this collection was long coming. Old bomber jackets, the B52, flight jackets from World War II all form an incredibly sexy canvas for this collection of 16 unique, one-off pieces. The denim is seriously distressed and I’ve used real camouflage from old uniforms from the 1940 to 1960 and some very old denim fragments.

Every detail is done by hand and every single piece is handmade and hand finished.

I’ve never made these designs before and I don’t think I will ever make them again. The pieces came together almost by themselves, and I believe that all I am, is the conduit through which an incredible story needs to be told. As a biker myself, I’ve always been drawn to freedom, individuality and effortless sense of cool that this style stands for. I have spent countless days and nights dreaming up a collection of fashionable and functional biker jackets and accessories. "The Airmen’s Collective" is a natural precursor to the stories that are yet to come.”

Akshay Sharma: “This collection marks the third generation of handcrafted propellers from WoodFeather. Each piece takes close to 6 weeks of work by different craftsmen to achieve the impeccable finish that earns a WoodFeather badge.

These collection witnesses an entirely new range under two categories of designs. The Classic range explores newer ways to showcase the natural finish of woods like Teak, Beech, Maple, Mahogany and Pine. While the Signature range is finished in a variety of paints and colours ranging from Metallic Silver to a Racing Red and Rich Whites to two-tone blues and many more.

The other big leap with this collection has been the introduction of the much-awaited 3-blade propellers. Adding ‘just another blade’ took over a year of exploring a different technique in crafting and finishing to perfect them into head turners that will be the pièce de résistance wherever they are placed.”