The idea was just a word: textile. From it, emerged a story told in photographs. The story is about craft and construction, about people and the human imperative to create. The players are manifold: designers, who produce narratives in fabric and embellishment; the model, who breathes life into the garments; the discerning stylist who arranges the bouquet of clothes; the hair and make-up artist, who transforms the model into a character (a person both real and fantastical); and the photographer, through whose eyes the story is distilled. Then there is the legion of support functionaries: the styling assistants, the hair and make-up assistants, the ironing professional, the person who meticulously unpacks and packs clothes, the lighting technicians, the cameraperson and many more. It takes a small army to make images that stay in the mind’s eye.

The mise-en-scène is a space in Mumbai that once housed a store known as Bungalow 8. The walls and ceiling are white, the fittings black, and the door, a collage of textured surfaces. The set is simple: a changeable roster of backdrops in rustic hues—washed-out ochre, military green and asphalt. The model walks onto the canvas and performs a series of motions before the camera and the assembly of players. For a few moments, there’s a feeling of watching a piece of theatre, a pantomime to which each individual might attach meaning.

Her name is Kirandeep Chahal. On the backdrop canvas she has the aura of a moody, melancholic character, moving to a soundtrack playing in her head. Her frame is lanky and androgynous, and her face is all edges and plains. She’s a tomboy, by her own admission. Like a lot of models, she fell into her line of work by chance. Raised in Jabalpur and Ludhiana, Chahal moved to Mumbai three years ago to work as a journalist. She was introduced to a modelling agency a few months after arriving. Two and a half years later, Chahal notched a career milestone. She walked the ramp for Dior at Paris Fashion Week in January this year. The trip was Chahal’s first outside the country. Her mother had never heard of Dior, and Chahal had to explain to her over a call in her native Punjabi. The event was significant for another reason. She had just razed her long hair and was anxious about what her agency would think. “It was a rebirth moment for me … to be accepted in such a manner,” she said. 

Chahal’s spiky buzz cut draws the eye. Hair and make-up artist Elton Fernandez transforms it by spraying her hair with blue and later, bronze and copper, and decorating it with silver bindis. “I wanted to make it unpretty but still beautiful,” he said. The aim was to “celebrate her femininity and fierceness and bring a subversive quality to the image-making.” The make-up is a play of textures, from a matte mouth and shiny cheekbones in one look to a glossy mouth and a wet brow with “just-bathed texture” in another, he said.