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Breast cancer survivors, stunning showstoppers

By Rediff Get Ahead Bureau
September 11, 2017 07:30 IST

Designer Premal Badiani put the cause in the New York Fashion Week spotlight.

Tina Sharma and Mary Ann DAchille, two of the breast cancer survivors who walked the ramp for Premal Badiani.
Photograph: @makingstridescentralpark/Instagram.

 

For her second outing at the New York Fashion Week, designer Premal Badiani decided to get the massive fashion event talking about breast cancer, a cause close to her heart.

"I wanted to force people to re imagine the disease that is supposed to make a woman feel unattractive and lose her womanhood. My aim with this collection was to showcase the breast cancer fighters and survivors as any other woman -- strong, sexy and sensuous while they took each step on the runway," the designer, who has lost someone close to her to the disease, said in a statement

Breast cancer survivors Mary Ann DAchille, Ozlem Koskun and Tina Sharma turned showstoppers for Badiani's collection titled Valentia, which means brave in Latin.

Badiani said, 'Tina is a stunningly beautiful, young survivor, mother of a 22-month-old which shows that cancer does not discriminate. Diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer she went through chemo and multiple lumpectomies just 7 weeks ago... she's undergone an incredible amount of wringer to get to a point where she feels whole.

Tina is currently NED (no evidence of disease) but as we know, the worries and concerns are always lurking.'

Mary, a Vogue model in her past life, has Multiple Myeloma and has been fighting it for last 8 years. She said, 'My biggest excitement is serving the American Cancer Society and serving the designer and being introduced to her beautiful designs. I love the influence of her ideas."

Ozlem said, 'It's a reflection of the support that I've received and as a result of that the courage and strength it has provided me to be able to now be a breast cancer survivor.'

Take a look.

 

Premal Badiani with her showstoppers -- Mary (left) and Tina (right).
Photograph: @Premalbadian/Facebook.

 

Belsi was the jewellery partner for the collection. Belsi's founder, Riddhi Fazal (centre) said, 'We decided to come onboard with Premal Badiani as we strongly believe in the cause and have always been a huge fan and supporter of everything that Premal does in and outside of fashion.'
Photograph: belsisjewelry/Instagram.

 

Badiani said she wanted the collection to 'encourage women to embrace womanhood with boldness, confidence and a touch of sensuality... The colour palette is explicitly chosen to support the breast cancer awareness.'
Photograph: @Premalbadian/Facebook.

 

Badiani complemented her collection with hand crafted floral and elk horn headpieces, symbolising the fighter spirit and the femininity of breast cancer survivors.
Photograph: @Premalbadian/Facebook.

 

The grand final bow.
Photograph: @Premalbadian/Facebook.

Earlier at New York Fashion Week

Rediff Get Ahead Bureau

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