Amit Aggarwal: The Timekeeper

I AM IN A somewhat Brutalist state of mind,” says Amit Aggarwal, as he ushers us into his office. The art move­ment comes instantly to mind, in the Noida-based fashion designer’s workspace. There are two looming paintings in charcoal hues from an artist in Thailand. There are the con­crete grey walls. There’s Aggarwal himself, dressed head-to-toe in black. Colour stands out like exclamation points—a gilded bodice on a mannequin from his latest couture line in one corner, a miniature version of a red dress worn by influencer Masoom Minawala at the Cannes Film Festival 2024 in another, a vase of pink lilies in the centre of the room.

It is the end of 2024, and the spirit in Aggarwal’s office is simultaneously languid and introspective. “We are rejoicing our wins and thinking about things we could have done bet­ter,” he says, settling into his seat with a coffee. “But we are also trying to set the tone for next year.” The past year has seen many changes for Aggarwal’s design journey, from the deep­ening complexity of his craft to his material explorations. His couture collection Antevorta unveiled at a runway show during India Couture Week 2024 received glowing reviews for its designs as well as its material conflation, upcycled textiles, and tone-on-tone embellishments. “Fearlessness was our big win this year,” he says. “You fear how you will be judged and perceived— especially as a fashion brand which is always scrutinised, be it by the media and customers or on social media. But the col­lection was really closer to what I am as a person. I took a gamble, unveiling the layers which bring a true light to what I am, and that has really paid off.”

The couture showcase also offered a first sneak peek of what launched more formally last October as The Banarasi Edit, a line of garments crafted from pre-owned Banarasi textiles—recalling a similar collection Aggarwal had made in 2017, using Banarasi and Patola. A year later, the designer has brought it back into action, with custom designs already seen on the likes of Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Kareena Kapoor Khan, and Isha Ambani. Aggarwal highlights the new collection’s popularity among customers not just among In­dians, but also in markets like the Middle East. “In India, one doesn’t always wear something that’s pre-owned on weddings and ceremonial occasions unless it’s an heirloom. But consumers have loved the deep-rooted angle of sustain­ability and creating fashion for the future,” he adds. “This made me feel stronger and less fearful. This is something I will continue to do next year.”

Bravery has always been inherent to Aggarwal’s oeuvre, packed with new-age industri­al materials and singular craft­ing techniques. And, so has an attempt to philosophise and spiritualise his designs. Ask why he chose to design clothes, and he says it was never an epiphany. “It has taken 40 years of my life to really answer his question,” he says. “I believe in the concept of reincarnation—my soul was designed to make clothing. Even be­fore this life, I created clothes and when my soul transcends this body and takes another form, I will continue doing so.”

Growing up in Mumbai, he also recalls early memories of his mother’s love for Sridevi and her wearing chiffon sarees and sleeveless blouses, reminiscent of the actor’s look in Chandni. “She embraced those clothes with so much love—those are some of my most beautiful memories from those years,” he says. As household responsibilities took her atten­tion, clothing—and by extension, self-care—took a backseat for her. Years later, when he once borrowed money from his father to buy her a designer outfit for her birthday, it seemed that there was “no occasion for her to wear something so nice.”

The thought of how clothing could impact one’s sense of self played on his mind, when he applied to study at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). Graduating in the early 2000s, Aggarwal apprenticed with international designers and honed his skills at couturier Tarun Tahiliani’s atelier before assuming the mantle of creative director at the erstwhile fashion label Morphe. The label was the first platform where he show­cased his micro-pleating with nylon in the first collection, and polymer in the second. He says, “It was still nascent and we were still developing the textiles, so it wasn’t as refined.” The designs grabbed attention for their unique textures, establishing Aggarwal as an up-and-coming designer.

Today, polymer weaving is Aggarwal’s most well-known signature, recurring across en­sembles and collections. The de­signer first came across polymer during a visit to a scrap factory, and found it extremely malleable. “I didn’t know its DNA, but felt that it could speak many languages and transform itself,” he says. “It melts in the heat, it reacts differently to water, it has the quality to float in air. Its interaction with the elements makes the material an eternal joy—a chemistry for life”.

Polymer became the hero material in Aggarwal’s repertoire, as he set up his eponymous label in 2012, but working with it posed a monumental human resource challenge. “For the first six months, tailors would come at 9.30 am to start working. By 12 pm, I wouldn’t see them around,” he remembers. “One day, I caught hold of a tailor and as they were trying to make their way out and asked what the problem was. They said, ‘We thought we would be stitching clothes, but we have to stitch plastic instead.’” It was the same story with embroiderers and weavers. Aggarwal realised that to keep his aesthetic intact, he would have to find different ways to adapt. The answer perhaps lay not in trying to get skilled karigars (artisans) and tailors, but to seek people who wanted an opportu­nity to grow. He asked his master tailor to find young tailors who knew basic sewing, and trained them to do the rest at his studio. “All the handcrafting such as cro­chet, turpai (stitching and hem­ming) are done by women. None of the women who knew these crafts wanted to work, so one day I caught hold of the lady who used to clean our bathrooms and asked if she would help me with some bunaai (weaving),” he says. “She freaked out in the begin­ning when I called her to my office, but it was a simple weave and she took it as a challenge.” In six months, more women in the Lado Sarai neighbourhood of Delhi, where Aggarwal’s studio was earlier located, wanted to work with him.

The craft’s initial simplic­ity made it easy for young and amateur artisans to learn, but their skills have grown with each collection and design innovation. The excitement is evident in Aggarwal’s sampling and tailoring units, housed within the Noida headquarters, where artisans are busy at work. Two mannequins standing next to each other showcase the same design—a glittering pink gown—being crafted in two sizes. Aggarwal, pauses between conversations with his team to show how mannequins are remade into different sizes for every bespoke order to create the perfect fit—the foundational pillar of couture. Barring embroidery, he can also sew and weave the materials himself, and draping is his forte.

THE INTRICATE DETAILING of his clothes always imbued the designs with a couture-like quality, but Aggarwal made his debut at India Couture Week only in 2018 with the Crystalis collection. Since then, he has become a mainstay at the annual event, with collections abounding in rich co­lours, sculptural drapes, layered textures, and intricate embellishments and craft that seem to grow in depth and com­plexity. For his 2024 couture collection Antevorta, he layered glass-like industrial nylon over organic cotton, weaving the material on a handloom. He explains. “In my area of expertise, as well as my personal philosophy, the amalgamation of two different things to form a new concoction is already interesting to me.”

Beyond the amalgamation of crafts and materials, lies the constant endeav­our to write clothing into a bigger story. An Amit Aggarwal collection is never simply explained, weaving a range of ideas into its pieces—from biomimicry and physics to poetry and philosophy. He speaks often of time and eternity in his collection notes; ‘Antevorta’ for instance, is named after the Roman goddess of the future and the collection showcase had opened with a model dressed in a ‘Time Pod’ ensemble, representative of genesis and the inception of time. Evoking time in a collection seems germane at a time when fashion has come to be seen as fast—abundantly available, swiftly purchased, thoughtlessly disposed. The label has plenty of initiatives towards conscious fashion. The Banarasi line repurposes old heritage fabrics while the label’s upcycling practices include reweaving production leftovers into fresh textiles. Beyond these tactile expres­sions however, he posits his designs against the perception that clothing is inanimate, to imbue what we wear with something akin to a life of its own.

His label is synonymous with couture, but Aggarwal says that he is first and foremost a prêt (ready-to-wear) designer. Despite the dominance of bridalwear and couture in India, luxury prêt is a rising category with a number of designers launching sub-labels and collections. With collections such as Core in 2023 and more recently The Evening Edit launched last December, his long-term vision is to create a prêt brand that stands on its own. “One of the things I am consciously working on is to make sure that the prêt is not based on particu­lar techniques,” he says, adding another reflective spin to the subject. “Good prêt should understand people’s core.”

His clothes may be stitched with philosophy, but Aggarwal’s success as a designer is rooted in the fact that his clothes are exquisitely crafted, and a marvel to look at. The label’s clientele has grown to include movie stars, A-list influ­encers, bridal clients, and anyone seeking a standout red carpet ensemble. The label is stocked across multi-design boutiques in India, and has a market in the Middle East, UK, US, Australia and other parts of Asia. Aggarwal has also expanded his retail footprint with flagship stores in Delhi and Mumbai, and is gearing up to launch a store in Hyderabad this year. The brand’s e-commerce website was revamped last year, and he adds that the aim is to also strengthen the platform’s retail operations.

Aggarwal’s business goals are marked by strategy, leaning on management and operational support, but ask what has his attention in design and he switches back in an instant to the abstract. If fearless­ness was his mantra for 2024, the idea of weightlessness now appeals to him. “I am interested in the tension between heaviness and lightness,” he says, return­ing to the conversation about Brutalism that began our meeting. “When I look at something very Brutalist, it has a powerful quality. It’s strong. What would it mean for something like this to be floating?” Perhaps a seed of an idea that will light up the runway in the coming season, coated in polymer and shine.

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