Control + Refresh

His commitment to his new role, coupled with property lease issues, may have led to the closure of his earlier Mumbai store, but he’s back with a renewed perspective and a fresh, youthful collection. And Kumar insists there are no regrets. “I’m one of the few creative directors for an online company in the world, so you can imagine how important curation and fashion is at Amazon. My work at the company is like design work, but on a much larger scale. How many people get the chance to change the way one billion people live? As a designer I’d be influencing fewer people. Here, the scale is 1,000 times larger than my own work,” says Kumar, who has also tried his hand at teaching, manufacturing and editing a fashion magazine in his nearly two decades long career. “And each aspect has only helped me grow and progress as a designer,” he adds.

The year 2012 saw Kumar make it to the Esquire’s Big Black Book of Style’s list of “The Best Men’s Stores in the World”, becoming the only Indian brand to have achieved that distinction. “You grow up thinking you want to be the best in the world, but it seems like such a far-fetched idea. The fact that it happened suddenly created a void. What next, I wondered. I had to rethink my priorities and reset my goals. That’s when the Amazon offer came in and the job took my goals to a different level altogether,” he says.

And today, with a strong team in place at Amazon, it’s time to shift part of his focus to his eponymous label. With a refreshed state of mind, Kumar claims he’s looking at the design process though a different perspective. The new store reflects this renewed purpose with its modern, minimalist and clean lines. “While we still maintain the level of our craft, the idea is to address fashion trends in a big way,” says Kumar.

If there’s one thing that the Amazon stint has taught him, it is that fashion happens every day. “With the Internet, trends come and go every day. If you’re not on top of things and get sucked into the seasonal statement cycle, you miss out on different contexts of fashion.” Keeping that in mind, Kumar’s Spring-Summer 2015 offering takes off on the ’70s tide sweeping through fashion right now. “We’ve done retro, but in a modern context, with bell bottoms, denims, high-waist pants, lace, etc. for women.” The menswear looks are cooler and sportier. “Tailoring has taken off in a big way. Men increasingly want to look more global than local,” says the menswear designer.

While fashion week participation may still be low on his current list of priorities  — “maybe next season,” he says non-committedly — for now, he is committed to making Amazon India Fashion Week, to be held in Delhi later this month, a successful event. As the title sponsor’s creative director Kumar will be working closely with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI), an organisation he had famously filed a case against, with the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission in 2006, when the governing body prohibited designers from participating simultaneously at both LFW and the erstwhile Wills Lifestyle sponsored India Fashion Week. Today, hatchets have been seemingly buried and Kumar is content to look “at the bigger picture”. “It’s good to be in a role that can help shape their system and build a framework that will enable a lot more designers, especially new talent, to grow their brand online,” he says, erring on the side of caution. The activist in him may be dormant for now, but Kumar is raring to go with a possible e-commerce deal in the works, enthusiastically “taking a leap into the next era”.