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Journalism of Courage
Just outside Ayodhya, in the tiny town of Uttar Pradesh’s Siddharth Nagar, a boy hated running his father’s medical store. Instead, he read newspapers, his window to the world outside. His hero was Hrithik Roshan, whose fashion sense he admired ever since he watched Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai on TV. Far away in Dholpur in Rajasthan, a farmer’s son idolised posters of James Dean, wondering if he could ever make the denims the American actor wore.
The first boy, Anurag Gupta, now 35, made it to design school. The second, Satendra Singh, 29, made it to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, where he patented the world’s first indigo-dyed wool denim that Gupta has used in his collection at the ongoing Lakme India Fashion Week.
Gupta’s latest collection features shirts, jackets, dresses, pants and overlays made from Singh’s indigo-dyed wool denim, crafted from wool in Himachal Pradesh’s Kullu and Dharamshala. Inspired by Japanese artist Hokusai’s waves, the collection blends sustainability with tech and style.Many designers are working with crafts, weaves and embroidery. But I wanted to create a tech-aided, production-friendly, wearable and clean material as that space is untapped in the India story,” Gupta tells The Indian Express. “Denim is democratic, working class. It is tough, but not warm enough in the hills. That’s when I began to experiment with wool.”
A friend introduced him to Singh, who had developed the indigo-dyed wool denim as an MTech student (2021-2023) inside an incubation lab at IIT-Delhi’s Department of Textile and Fibre Engineering. “Cotton denim lacks thermal insulation. We used plasma technology — ionised gases — to beat back the wool’s scratchy scales and enhance its strength without damaging its fibres. The result is a denim warm enough to be worn as a single layer in minus 3-4 degrees Celsius,” explains Singh, whose research is funded by the Ministry of Textiles, SIDBI and angel investors.
The denim’s magic lies in its blend — 35% wool mixed with breathable hemp, banana fibre, bamboo and recycled cotton. “It’s all-weather and moisture-absorbent. You may board a flight wearing it in Delhi in December and not need to take it off when you land in a warmer Bengaluru — it will dry out your sweat,” explains Gupta. By removing the scales from wool fibres, Singh has improved its mechanical and moisture management properties: in other words, it is machine-washable and quick-drying. “Dry washes use solvents and toxic chemicals. Our denim doesn’t need any of that,” he says.
His wool denim is eco-friendly too. “A cotton denim shirt uses 3,000 litres of water (to make). Our shirt consumes seven litres,” says Gupta. “We have also been able to reduce emissions by 85%,” adds Singh, whose machine prototype at IIT-Delhi was validated for commercial production.
Singh, who co-founded a start-up, IndigoTex, in 2024, has already begun exporting the fabric to the EU. He is now working on advanced high-altitude wear to endure colder, snow-bound conditions. He adds, “We’ve created a wool denim jacket weighing 3.8 kg. Our goal is to bring that down to 2 kg.”
Gupta, who is retailing through multi-brand designer stores and attracting European buyers, is a self-starter. “My father ran the family medical store after completing Class 12. He expected me to follow suit. Nobody read in our family, but I read the newspapers and watched TV. I was a very curious child and loved to draw. And I loved the newspaper’s lifestyle supplements — what we once called Page 3 — that introduced me to fashion,” says Gupta.
Having attended a government school, Gupta took extra classes from his English teacher and continues to take classes for his conversational skills.“Without speaking English, you are not fancy enough as a designer,” says Gupta, who could not get into the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Lucknow, because he could not articulate his ideas in English. “Since I had used the little money my father had to chase my dreams, I returned to help him at his shop,” says Gupta, who kept saving and applying to institutes, till he got accepted by the Northern India Institute of Fashion Technology, Ludhiana.
“I debuted in 2018 as part of the Fashion Design Council of India’s (FDCI) GenNext showcase at a fashion week,” says Gupta, who has apprenticed with designers Manish Arora and Varun Bahl.
Unlike Gupta, Singh always wanted to get into IIT, and even perfected his maths and science scores. However, his farmer father lacked the resources to fund his education.
“One day, he got me a newspaper cutting with an advertisement about admission to a diploma course at the Indian Institute of Handloom Technology, Jodhpur. He said I would get a stipend too. I used the opportunity, became the all-India diploma topper, secured a lateral entry into the MLV Textile and Engineering College, Bhilwara and completed my B Tech in textile chemistry. I even got a job at Welspun,” says Singh.
It was during this time that he attended a conference on technical textiles at IIT-Delhi. “Then, Covid hit. I stayed with a friend in Jaipur, who is a co-founder of IndigoTex, conducted online classes to sustain myself, took the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) for M Tech and got into IIT-Delhi.”
At IIT-Delhi, Professor Bhupendra Singh Butola taught him fibre engineering and conceived the idea of indigo-dyed wool denim during a visit to Ladakh, where he realised the limitations of cotton denim in cold climates. We did 1,500-2,000 trials before the dyeing was successful. Then, we worked on making it commercially viable. This took three years,” says Singh, who intends to work with more eco-friendly fibres.
Gupta, who once lived with five people in a room in Noida and sustained himself on Rs 5,000 that his father sent, now has his own unit and rents his own place. “We are getting there,” he says.
