In the late 1980s, when socialist India was getting impatient and bubbling with ‘yeh dil maange more’ aspiration, and it had not embraced liberalisation yet, two young men took to painting and art. One was a Wharton School of Business graduate and the other a chartered accountant (CA). They rebelled against their family expectations and decided that India’s art heritage needed a market and an identity. So, they made the people around them their canvas, dressing them up with much more colour and poise than the neighbourhood darzi, cancelling the austere and staid Nehru jacket and sari with the opulence of royalty. They wanted to put up an Indian design label as a standout statement on the global ramp. That business graduate was Tarun Tahiliani, now 62, and the CA was JJ Valaya, 56. They went back to fashion school and birthed Indian designer wear and labels as we know it today, adapting Western couture and adorning it with Indian sensibility and craftsmanship. Tahiliani opened one of India’s first multi-brand designer stores, Ensemble, in 1987, in Mumbai, and Valaya his eponymous store, in 1992, in Sultanpur, Delhi. Now, nearly three decades later, they are still at the top, surviving newer waves of talent and on the cusp of another change. This time, they are democratising fashion — Tahiliani with OTT, a label of ‘wearable, simple silhouettes’, and Valaya with JJV Kapurthala, a bridge-to-luxury wear, priced under Rs 50,000. Back in the day, Tahiliani gathered his like-minded friends — Rohit Khosla, who had apprenticed with designers in New York; Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, who had styled costumes for films like Umrao Jaan (1981); Anuradha Mafatlal, descendant of a textile baron; fellow designers Anita Shivdasani and Sunita Kapoor and New York designer Neil Bieff. “We chose a colonial building at Lion’s Gate, Mumbai, got as many weavers and embroiderers from Mohammed Ali Road and, initially, relied on high society for endorsement. We started with about 80 outfits in the open space on December 12, 1987. Our work was more like art pieces, each distinct in its own way. As women sipped on champagne and nibbled on hors d’oeuvres, models in pencil skirts and jackets went around in silk topis, sheer anarkalis, inspired by Mughal miniatures, in silk, jamawar, layered tissue, organza and lamé. A week later, we were feted like French designers as socialites came to buy our clothes. The topi sold for Rs 300. We never sent out invites, these were closed-door events for people who would buy these boutique pieces. They were like the neo-royalty and redefined luxury for the aspirant Indian,” says Tahiliani, who was guided by textile revivalist Martand Singh to study the costumes of India’s royals and the weaves they patronised. Valaya, who had many firsts to his credit — a first-batch student of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), New Delhi, one of the founding members of the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), which was formed in 1998; and among the first to show at the Paris Haute Couture Week (2001) — recalls the heady days. “We had our first solo show in Delhi, in the early 1990s, then took it to Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and London, where we sold out. By 1996, we had a luxury store that went beyond womenswear, menswear and showcased home decor, furnishings and artefacts. It also had an art gallery and a fine-dining restaurant,” says Valaya. Cut to India Couture Week 2024. Tahiliani broke the elitism of privilege by doing a repeat show for guests who had missed his show in the overcrowded hall. During the final bow, he stepped back, letting his young apprentices dance to the applause. “If you want longevity for your brand, you have to prepare these kids to feel and live up to people’s expectations,” says the designer, who is waiting to take a dip in the Kumbh. “That’s where I unmade myself, was born again,” he tells us. It is the quotidian moments there and the pilgrims’ drapes that have inspired his line for Gen Z. Meanwhile, in a quiet anteroom in Delhi, we catch Valaya resting on his bolsters, animatedly lolling about the couch, laughing with his young team — unbridled and un-turbaned. “However, in fashion, there’s no room for resting,” says the man who decidedly went off the map between 2017 and 2019. It was about moulting and shedding everything he knew. Valaya is now far more self-critical on his comeback trail. “A brand has to evolve. At a point, I was stagnating, there was a certain sameness and boredom that set in. Perhaps, I was spread too thin. I had to do a hard reset, re-align my imagination with what the business needed, what the market wanted,” he says of giving up his self-indulgent ways. “It is a bigger challenge to pare down what you fall in love with into something that more people will love and understand.” Tahiliani, likewise, saw the need to make the shift from a time when fashion was elitist and seen as a curated luxury. “Fashion today can’t be just sold to the super rich. It also has to find a younger voice. We have to provide Indian answers and Indian solutions,” he says. He is now experimenting with dhoti-saris, pairing it with button-down, collared cotton shirts. Fashion labels now need a wider market to be sustainable and can no longer be an effete and insular pursuit. Then & Now In the ’90s, designers had little or no references to go by, and as India was waiting to exhale on the back of liberalisation, they gave full rein to their imagination with billowing excesses of an exotic India. Tahiliani recalls how fashion designer and entrepreneur Bina Ramani did her first show with cow heads on sequined dresses. “It was insane, genuine, original and stunning. Then, fashion was more about spectacle, frivolity and playfulness. It was heady and new. People came to the show themselves; we didn’t want the world. But to become an industry, you cannot be just a culture club. Today, you cannot be flippant but proficient and be connected to the market.” When Valaya started out, menswear had hardly progressed beyond the bandhgala, sherwani and churidar. Yet, over the last three decades, people have gone beyond wedding wear. Now, there is room for more ready-to-wear and accessories. Sensing new winds, designers choose technology for better cuts, fits, silhouettes and creating mixed fabrics and weaves. But except the body confidence that it has given young people, Tahiliani thinks technology has also homogenised the look. “Youngsters are guided by Instagram and imprinted images rather than developing their original style. It’s dulling their sensibilities. You see a sameness at airports around the world, you can’t make out which city you are in,” he says. That’s why he is breaking out of his own designs that have been cloned too often. Change in design philosophy The Kumbh, which Tahiliani plans to attend at the end of this year, has become his fountainhead of new ideas. “I grew up in south Bombay, went to boarding school, spoke in English, imbibed Western culture and inherited the coloniser’s mindset. The sadhus and the mass of pilgrims were an alien world. I was deracinated by my Western upbringing. Yet, I found that this was a democratic confluence of ideas and people. Strangers shared food and the monks let you in their tents, engaging in dialogue and discourse, not out-shouting you. I had the barriers, they didn’t. And I realised that I didn’t give India a chance. For two whole days, I moved with the sadhus and my camera,” says Tahiliani. Kumbh shaped his fashion philosophy. He studied how each pilgrim draped themselves with the dhoti and the sari chaddar, how the Naga sadhus garlanded themselves with the rudraksh beads. “I am still documenting these draping styles and making structured and pre-pleated contemporary-looking garments for young people. You can just slip on, zip up and wear them like a trouser, a sari or a skirt. This way, we can preserve our clothing heritage that was actually geared for our climate and comfort. The best part at the Kumbh is the million ways the monks folded their cloth. In their sameness, they were fiercely different. It was the opposite of cloning,” says Tahiliani. He owes the tone-on-tone palate to villagers in Kutch. And his commitment to weaves was inspired by a weaver family, who covered their sheep with warm clothes so that the animal could stay healthy and grow a thick coat of fur. They would then trim it for weaves. “No designer can be this crazy,” he says. On the other hand, Valaya has distilled a new global idiom from his many travels along the old Silk Route. His latest collection is influenced by the three capitals of Islamic art: Isfahan (Iran), Istanbul (Turkey) and Delhi (India). So there’s Ottoman architectural motifs from Istanbul, florals from Persian carpets, mosaic and calligraphy from Isfahan and the Mughal miniatures and inlay work from Delhi. “They co-exist, layering each other up, a combined heritage of three civilisations. That’s how rich and relevant we are,” says Valaya. He has even contemporised the geometry of Art Deco with chevron patterns on nomadic skirts, shirt pleats, the dhoti and the turban. The new Valaya is minimal, controlled and subtle, a spillover of his collaboration with Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth Carter for styling the character of Queen Ramonda (played by Actor Angela Bassett) in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). It won the Oscars last year for best costume. Bassett made a statement in a structured and pearl-encrusted ivory gown, a fitted purple dress with gold embellishments and a flowing red dress with a cape. With this project, Valaya had found that balance between tradition and modernity. “You cannot bastardise design but you have to blend it to the language of the day,” he says. Tahiliani’s latest line of art nouveau gowns with embroidered crystal corset tops attached to draping wings, one of which was worn by Jahnvi Kapoor to the Ambani wedding, is as much 1930s and present-day Paris as it is about tradition and modernity. “My grammar has changed as everybody wants to wear a statement piece that’s light, minimal, yet classical and can last beyond the event day,” says Tahiliani. Corporate tie-ups Both agree that corporate tie-ups are a good way of scaling up and staying relevant. Tahiliani admits his value systems have changed while riding out the trough of Covid years and seeing the plight of his karigars. He has now moved his workshops to their villages, so that they do not have to migrate or live in urban slums. He’s tied up with the Aditya Birla group for a menswear line Tasva that swears by ease and comfort. He has had record sales and believes he can never have the managerial expertise of growing the business. “I can focus on designs better. Remember Karl Lagerfeld had his own signature despite working for various brands. Alexander Mc Queen wouldn’t have become bigger without Gucci,” he argues. Valaya also believes corporatisation can give what designers cannot get on their own: scale and sustainability in a fickle industry. Neither can it take away individual talent. “Everybody talks about Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs and Stella Mc Cartney, does anybody know they are owned by LVMH? Besides, we have barely scratched the surface of our retail market: luxury, pret, ready-to-wear, mass. That’s enough to validate us and keep us going,” he says. Tahiliani, who hasn’t taken a Sunday off for the last eight months, has never been happier. “I am an old geyser who is trusted and still runs,” he says. Both do not use showstoppers, confident that their story will have takers, both on and off the ramp.
