Wearing a block-printed shirt with floral printed pants and a scarf fashioned into a head wrap, German-French actor Romy Schneider sat at a table, smoking, as Helmut Newton photographed her for Marie Claire. In 1972, everything about Schneider’s bohemian chic style was straight out of the Swinging Sixties, as if she’d just returned from a Jimi Hendrix concert. Schneider was dressed by Paris-based Indian designer Mohanjeet Grewal, who had set up shop on the Left Bank, eight years ago. Now almost 60 years later, Grewal’s hair is dyed platinum blonde, and she laughs recalling her faith in herself as a young designer—the first Indian dressmaker in Paris. “I was so foolish,” she exclaims. ‘I thought I could be successful!” Little over two decades before Grewal set up her shop in Paris, World War II had torn through the country, in the aftermath of which Dior came up with his structured female silhouette, that unravelled in the Mod era. That was exactly when Grewal entered fashion. “At that time, French women were still going to their tailors and couture houses,” she recalls. “The ready-to-wear market was just opening up.” She arrived with her khadi shirts and khari prints, which were immediately swooped up for magazine editorial spreads, and by actors like Romain Gary and Jean Seberg, who lived right opposite her store. “They were coming all the time,” she says. “They loved me.”
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