“Delhi did not get a single clean air day last year,” says Delhi-based haute couturier Rahul Mishra, and this weighs on his mind. He recently lost his father to lung problems caused by the city’s pollution and has a nine-year-old daughter who constantly questions why she needs to wear a mask.
The designer thinks deeply about man’s impact on the environment, and ideas based on environmental and social responsibility delicately weave their way into his exquisitely embroidered collections.
The messages range from the subtle to the bold and for the collection that he presented at the haute couture shows in Paris last month, which was especially personal with regards to the environment, loss and rebirth as seen in the Hindu belief in the cycle of life. “All my collections are inspired by personal experience,” Mishra explained as we spoke over a crackling connection while he sat on a train between Paris and London a few days after that show.
Ten years after founding his couture house and five years after he was invited onto the official haute couture calendar, Mishra is planning to open an atelier and showroom in Paris for his couture clients, many of whom live in the Gulf. He will be hosting a luxury pop-up in the region this year with plans to open a flagship store here as well.
His ready-to-wear line, a joint venture with Reliance Brands in India, is stocking his effortless floral printed dresses inspired by nature and the landscape exclusively at Saks Fifth Avenue in the US. He says it is one of the fastest-selling brands at the store.
Last autumn, he embroidered a collaboration with Tod’s to launch his own handbag range. With the booming economy in India, the 45-year-old designer admits it’s a great time to be an entrepreneur.
A substantial part of his business comes from weddings, which in Indian culture span several days, requiring several changes of outfit – he describes them as the "red carpet" events for people who aren’t celebrities. Although that is not how one would describe billionaire Anant Ambani who wore a custom Verdure bandi embellished with hand-embroidered cranes by Mishra, paired with a kurta and pant set to the Garba evening for his wedding last July to Radhika Merchant.
Bollywood actress Suhana Khan wore a hand-embroidered pastel lehenga set and Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan ordered several pieces from the designer to wear for the wedding. There were other guests in his saris too, including the wife of the founder of an Italian luxury brand, which was a pleasing and discreet endorsement of Mishra’s artistry.
Fans of his lavishly embroidered saris and lehengas (three-piece skirt, blouse and scarf) and menswear include many Bollywood stars such as Priyanka Chopra Jonas, her husband Nick and Deepika Padukone, as well as Gigi Hadid and Zendaya who both wore his pieces for the opening of the Nita Ambani Cultural Centre in 2023.
Zendaya was dressed in a purple floral embroidered saree gown with a gold Flying Cranes bralette while Hadid wore an intricately embroidered trench coat and trousers with a fantastical Himalayan spring floral design that took 2,400 hours to make.
Mishra’s social media is filled with images of brides and celebrities accompanied by descriptions of the intricate embellishment produced by his artisans in studios across India, acknowledging their skills and thousands of hours of painstaking work. He describes his vision of couture as “mindful luxury” – luxury through the lens of participation and not just consumption.
“People love crafted things and that is a very good sign,” he says. He mentions one Dutch bride who, after her wedding, framed her wedding dress as an art piece. “Indian women are not interested in ‘quiet luxury’, they love craftsmanship and are carrying forward the entire legacy. Craft that takes more time to create is much better for the planet and also provides employment.”
He employs 300 people in his atelier on the outskirts of Delhi including embroidery artisans and tailors. The company also works with 1,200 embroiderers and weavers in various craft centres in West Bengal, Madya Pradesh and the Bareilly region in Uttar Pradesh.
One of his main ambitions has been to employ people in rural India so their families can make a living. “We look at the idea of creating slow fashion, at the idea of creating more employment,” he explains. “Everything we produce is handmade. India has the largest population in the world and we look at how what we do can impact trade and create employment.”
Mishra is mindful of his social responsibility as he also grew up in Malhausi, a small village near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh where there was barely any electricity and the school was a mud hut with a thatched roof. He points out that you don’t need electricity for embroiderers and weavers to do their work.
He envisaged being an artist but stumbled on his industry by accident and enrolled on an apparel design programme at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad despite his father’s fury, who hoped Mishra would become an engineer.
Mishra released his debut eponymous ready-to-wear label at Lakme Fashion Week in 2006, subsequently won the annual International Woolmark Prize in 2014 and went to Paris where he became the first Indian to be invited to showcase at the haute couture collections in 2020.
Each season the embroidery does the storytelling, and his latest collection is called The Pale Blue Dot, named after the essay by Carl Sagan about how the Earth is but a speck in the vast cosmic arena.
Sagan says: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.”
Mishra adds: “In the wake of my father passing, I have been repeatedly confronted with the realisation that we are but a speck in the grand scheme of the cosmos – small, fragile and not in control.”
There is a darkness to this collection which opens with a cloak and dresses 3D-embroidered with black futuristic cityscapes: representing the cities that to Mishra make demands on the environment. “Look at how fragile the eco-system is and at the same time how greedy we all are a people, a species, that we keep taking all the land to build more,” he says.
The story on the catwalk evolves with the Metropolis dresses segueing into a beaded catsuit with embroidered black birds about to take flight. “One of the rituals when my father passed away is that you feed the ravens every day because, in Hindu mythology, they are the messengers of the departed souls, a connection with your ancestors,” he explains.
Various other metaphors are threaded through the design of the embroideries with the tree of life symbolic of renewal and a finale of beautiful, gilded gowns sending a message about the quiet resilience of the Earth and the healing power of mother nature.
It is a philosophical collection that communicates Mishra’s concerns, but as the many brides and celebrities who wear his colourful dresses and saris testify, there is no one like Mishra for championing Indian craftsmanship with such passion and beauty.
