From the whimsical to the wonderful; Object reporters discover designers known and emerging in a bid to create a database that showcases the wonders of textile, design, craft and construction in India.
Suket Dhir
Designer
In his pieces, there is a celebration of Indian arts and crafts—from traditional weaves to high art, from ancient sculptures to their renderings in modern silhouettes.
Swatti Kapoor
Designer
Philosophy, poetry, and painting find a home in Swatti’s deeply intertextual work.
CountryMade
Designer
A theatre of war and its correspondences paint a portrait of the other.
Dhruv Vaish
Designer
Complacency is an anathema to fashion, to be comfortable around skin is its epitome.
Anushe Pirani
Designer
Behind the serenity of a garment there is always an idea in sleepless turmoil.
Mason and Mill
Designer
A cool brickwork corner of a factory is where Mason and Mill began. The idea was to create clothes of an easygoing kind that the designer could herself wear in the swelter of a Mill.
Hemji
Designer
Surrounded by the clairvoyance of gemstones and combined with a love for the handloom, Hemji chooses to put all the elemental energies of air, water, earth and sun into its fabric. There is no right way to wear a Hemji, one is free to experiment.
Paher
Designer
Texture itself is imperfect and there is no such thing as plain. Knowing that the perfection of handmade is in its imperfection, Paher’s aestheticism marries the modern to the handmade.
Injiri
Basant Kothi
Designer
Being minimal and simple evades the question of categorising oneself into the genres of high and low fashion. Basant Kothi moves towards sustainable choices with a neutral and clean aesthetic which is highly understated.
Mapcha
Designer
Mapping the visual language systems of the Himalayas and intermingling these with Buddhist iconography is the sort of stuff that Lhanzey Palden does with Mapcha. If there was a wearable ode to Ladakh and Tibet, Mapcha is its bard.
Saphed
Designer
Shirin Salwan’s garments, with its clean lines and muted colours, embody the Esprit Nouveau of Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, the designer’s home city.
Adheera
Designer
Adheera crafts garments that are earthy and free-flowing with delicate shibori designs, in a process that is deeply rooted in sustainability.
Arun Khatua
Artisan
The versatility of handmade is seen clearly in the work of women that Arun Khatua employs at the Belun Hasta Shilp Kuti Society.
Kilchu
Designer
For Kilchu, inspirations are almost always quirky and close at hand. A little found object could be the seed idea to an entire collection. Yet, Kilchu aims at not only being spontaneous but also by responding to nature and what’s contemporary.
Lal Design Studio
Designer
The coastal town of Pondicherry—its buildform, cornices and vivid colours—has been a constant inspiration for Bidisha Samantaray at Lal Design Studio.
Urvashi Kaur
DESIGNER
Urvashi Kaur’s clothing, with its structured cuts and fluid silhouettes, embodies an aesthetic that is gender fluid and trans-seasonal.
Ka-Sha
Designer
Voluminous yet sustainable, Ka-Sha works on the blank canvas of kora kapda or the plain white cloth. With her brand, designer Karishma Shahani brings back the maximalist urge, although with restraint.
SWGT
Designer
With her brand being a process laid out in the first letters of the words ‘Seeker, Wander, Gatherer and Thinker’, Shweta Gupta is a master of moving forms, as the body moves, there is a kind of fluidity inspired by the sharp light and shade one observes in the Himalayas.
O'Frida
Designer
The pure freedom of free visualisation is the name of the game for Rini Agarwal, the founder of O’Frida. Her process is a painstaking recreation of a visual dream.
sonal ben
artisan
Sonal Mehta works with marginalised communities in Gujarat, particularly the Kotwalia bamboo workers of Dang, empowering them with modern bamboo utilisation techniques.
Raffughar
Designer
Unabashedly political and contemporary, Rather’s work stems from his Kashmiri identity. The art of Raffu, or the healing of fabric, is melded through Raffughar’s alchemy to speak of the travails of an uncertain life in the valley.
Eka
Designer
After a decade in the fashion industry, Rina Singh found herself at odds with it and now aims to redefine Indian fashion by breaking away from the limitations of the mainstream.
Line Outline
Designer
Line Outline is a cry against what the designer Deepit Chugh calls ‘hardcore mass’ retail, where the choice of clothes that men can wear is severely limited in range and imagination. Line Outline is an attempt at changing this state of affairs.
Aeka by Anupriya
Designer
Aeka is Sanskrit for the number one. It denotes the matchless zeal with which the brand approaches linen, the designer’s favourite fabric, to make sustainable designs for young and environmentally conscious consumers.
Fool Dost
Designer
Fool Dost works with artisan communities from Gujarat, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, amalgamating their work with Laura Halliwell’s cuts and silhouettes.
Terra Tribe
Designer
Charmee Ambavat works with a colour palette that has been long disregarded in the annals of fashion: the many shades of brown, green and white.
November noon
Designer
November Noon is an attempt by the designer Deepak Shah at bringing heritage handloom closer to the younger generation. His outfits are replete with traditional and modern motifs.
Mina Ben
ARTISAN
Mina Ben burst into the scene with a hat seen on Hailey Bieber's head on the cover of American Vogue. Since then, there has been no looking back.
Aseem Kapoor
DESIGNER
Aseem Kapoor encourages you to “think global, act tribal,” in a celebration of fashion that connects beyond borders.
Vijendra Chhipa
Artisan
A work that carries with it a certain mindfulness takes the artisan away from all the humdrum of mechanisation.
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