Rahul Mishra, the first Indian designer to showcase at the Paris Haute Couture Week champions slow fashion with traditional Indian crafts. His eponymous label with two flagship stores in India and a thriving national and international distribution channel finds its genesis in the ideas of sustainability that present fashion as a tool to create participation and empower the local craft community of India.
The brand’s purpose defines the process. The achingly slowed down process of hand-weaving and hand embroidery allows to build sustainable livelihoods for more than 1000 artisans. Fashion critic and former International Fashion Editor of Vogue, Suzy Menkes, an avid follower of the brand’s work, regards Rahul as a “national treasure” while the late Franca Sozzani has praised him as “successfully highlighting the best and most peculiar features of his homeland.”
The design house that works on the philosophy of the 3 E’s – Environment, Employment, and Empowerment, aims to look at luxury from the lens of participation and not just consumption.
Rahul Mishra Couture Fall Winter 2022 – 2023 collection presents THE TREE OF LIFE
Growing up in India, numerous instances of worshipping trees, this inherent part of our culture manifests in different ways during the harvest festivals spread in regions across our subcontinent. The great Banyan tree is a god like presence through our lives, witnessing our journey from childhood to adulthood just as it did with generations of our ancestors. It is the visual of this very tree — where numerous mornings of seasons of the earth have passed.
Basking in the golden sun, ’The Tree of Life’ is a manifestation of nature’s abundance. It’s an attempt to celebrate its opulence and beauty. This collection renders our gratitude for nature’s wisdom. Under the glorious setting sun, how every leaf transmutes to gold, with glimmering drops of dew—a pinnacle of life. Basking in the golden sun, ’The Tree of Life’ is a manifestation of nature’s abundance. It’s an attempt to celebrate its opulence and beauty.
This collection renders our gratitude for nature’s wisdom. Under the glorious setting sun, how every leaf transmutes to gold, with glimmering drops of dew—a pinnacle of life.
In this collection, two and three dimensional embroideries articulate the first flush of nature emerging on the surface of a body, and life that grows from it. Intricately embellished artworks articulate scenes from dense forests with ancient architectural remains and vegetation in modern day silhouettes. A fresh application for the brand, metallics add another dimension to our brand’s signature hand craft.
True to the values of ‘Haute Couture’, pieces feature fabrics that are handwoven in remote locations in India, embroidered with hand for over 10,000 human hours and sewn to perfection for clothing that is featherweight despite its convoluted surfaces.
A contemporary application using multitude of traditional surface embellishment techniques from the Indian subcontinent, this collection is a manifestation of artistic memory. It endeavours to cultivate a circular economy for craft communities in India. The core aim of the collection continues to focus on grass root empowerment and provide encouragement to the artisans make the clothes.
Credit of Rahul Mishra Couture
STYLING BY ELISA NALINNALIN ; HAIR DELPHINE COURTEILLE W/ B AGENCY ; MAKE UP JANE RICHARDSON W/ GARY REPRESENTS ; MAKE UP SPONSOR NARS ; CASTING DIRECTOR MAUD COSIALS ; PHOTOGRAPHY NOWFASHION ; VIDEO & LIVESTREAM FRANCE ENTERTAINMENT ; PRODUCTION NAPOLEON EVENTS
All images courtesy of Rahul Mishra
