The Zen of Style

DHRUV KAPOOR’S Fall/Winter (FW) 2025 collection, showcased at Milan Fashion Week (MFW) Men’s in January, is a homage to India. Among the collection’s most eye-catching designs is a black jacket with white and red embellishments swirling down the front and sleeves. At first glance, it resem­bles a baroque design, strands of an intricately made panel. Look a little longer, and the optical illusion clears to reveal the de­sign—the patterns of long hair braided with red ribbons, one of the collection’s many hat-tips to India. “It isn’t perceived as cool. It’s an image that does not exist in urban India,” says Kapoor about the motif as we settle into his design studio in Gurugram.

The knotted structure of a braid also brings to mind a phrase from Kapoor’s brand biography: twisted modernity. “Everything that is modern, current and contemporary is already out there. How can I tweak that to make it memo­rable–be it pleasant or bizarre? We might do it through a pairing of colours that seems strange, or even an ‘error’ in­tentionally added in a design to make you notice the embroi­dery next to it,” Kapoor says.

Kapoor has always sought to capture attention. His epony­mous label, launched in 2013, brought the designer to Lakme Fashion Week’s GenNext pro­gramme a year later, making him part of a cohort of some of India’s most cutting-edge designers who got a headstart in the incubation programme. A string of awards and accolades followed as the brand grew. More than a decade later, Kapoor has got more than just India’s attention. Participat­ing in MFW through digital presentations and trade shows since 2019, he made his runway debut at the event in 2022 and has been a steady presence in the official calendar since. Milan remains one of the world’s biggest fashion capitals—its seasonal fashion shows directing fashion trends every season around the world. Being here has put Kapoor on the global radar.

Yet, Milan is more than just business for Kapoor. “For me, it’s simply going back home,” says the designer. Born and raised in Delhi, Kapoor decided to pursue fashion designing while he was still in middle school—he once also contemplated becoming a jeweller–and studied at the National Fashion Institute of Design Technology (NIFT). He then headed to Italy to pursue a Master’s degree at Istituto Marangoni, followed by a stint working for the Italian luxury label Etro—an experience that became pivotal to his self-discovery as a designer. “Until then, I was a typical Delhi boy who would buy five luxury brands and wear them head to toe. In Milan, nobody want­ed to show off brands,” he recalls. “When fashion weeks happened, there was a buzz in the city. It made me daydream, and hypothetically build a brand.”

RETURNING TO INDIA, Kapoor knew that he would build a contemporary label that would be expressive and emotional. Clothes that would celebrate zeitgeist and pop cul­ture, but would also offer space for con­templation. Gender-bending style was an early foundational pillar. “We wanted to make women look stronger, and men look softer,” he says. “Which is, till date, exactly the same.” Not just in terms of gender-bending silhouettes, Kapoor has preserved many of the essential elements that sparked the beginning of his brand. It continues to be graphic and maximal­ist, abounding in oversized silhouettes, experimental construction and singular detailing. Shirts that swap buttons for tie-ups have been bestsellers over several seasons as have a line of cargo pants— these designs recur from one collection to another in new colourways and motifs. Denim remains a key material in the brand’s design language, interpreted in slouchy jackets and shirt dresses.

But Kapoor isn’t just moved by what sells most or pleases him, it is often quite the opposite. As a child, he clipped out pages from fashion magazines that excited him. “It’s changed now. I pick up what excites me, but also what I completely detest. And I enjoy approaching the second pile more because we can build on it,” he says. This is how the brand’s enduring love for prints began, and so did experiments with the colour red. Corduroy, another peeve, remains a work in progress. “I am still not success­ful with it but we will keep pushing till we fall in love with it.”

His collections also remain concep­tually-driven, big ideas stitched into the folds of garments. The label’s FW21 collection—showcased virtually at MFW—was titled A New Enlighten­ment: Rise of Homo Empathicus revolving around the idea of empathy. A few sea­sons later, came The Embracer (FW23-24), a collection that included a collabora­tion line with Godzilla, the movie fran­chise’s iconic monsters translated into fantastical prints. “I wanted to give it a spin that wasn’t about the monster,” he says. “I thought of them as superpowers, and how we should embrace everything we have in us and in others.”

The brand has also evolved over the years, as Kapoor and his team have ed­ited their design grammar, and distilled the vision for a brand that may be rooted and headquartered in India but is meant for the world. “Whether it is embroidery or a silhouette that may be borrowed from the country, it is done in a way where the global audience could per­ceive it, endorse it, wear it, and enjoy it,” Kapoor says. In the FW25 collection (of which the braid jackets and other ensem­bles are part), the mogra, a quintessential Indian flora, becomes the reference for pearly white embellishments, marigold gets a metallic makeover, and tieback dresses take cues from saree blouses. The interpretation of everything from paisleys to hand-block printed Ajrakh is deconstructed, abstracted, distressed and engineered into the unexpected. Kapoor, dressed in a pair of trousers from the col­lection, loosely based on the dhoti, adds that if he ever made a lehenga, it would probably be made from technical jersey and certainly “not meant for a wedding”.

Emphasising on construction and craft has ushered maturity in Kapoor’s designs, gaining subtlety and refinement. His work has gained in subtlety and refinement. It is a natural coming of age, if you will, for a designer who has spent more than a decade honing his design language and depth. For long-standing clients, however, and in popular imagi­nation, the label perhaps still brings to mind a youthful, streetwear-chic energy. Kapoor isn’t ready to let go of that side ei­ther. This month, he is set to debut Kapoor 2.0, a new brand extension that will take its “hyper elements and best staples and move it into an accessible segment.” Kapoor has dabbled in af­fordable prices and designs before, particularly in a 2023 collabora­tion with the Indian e-commerce marketplace Ajio but this is a more strategic move from Kapoor’s own operations. “The main line [Dhruv Kapoor] is who I am now, and Kapoor 2.0 is where all my childhood desires are thriving. I want to play with them one by one,” he says. The protago­nist of Kapoor 2.0’s first collection drop of K2, for instance, is a black cat—an animal Kapoor once feared—as many do in India, stemming from a popular superstition. Another design titled Polymagic will pon­der the excesses of plastic surgery. In the future, Kapoor has his eyes on the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland. Designed for men and women, the new line will also offer more entry-level price points for aspirational buyers.

THE TWO BRANDS represent dual sides of Kapoor’s personality—one hyper and one zen. Somewhere between the two, the designer finds him­self. At his core, Kapoor is a spiritualist as much as a designer. Faith in the divine and the metaphysical suffuse everything Kapoor does, right down to the daily operations of his studio and headquarters, painted in ecru and design, according to Vastu. “It was going to be black, concrete, and dark wood,” he recalls. “On my aunt’s suggestion, we changed everything to ecru and the centre of the building [through every floor] is empty.” Kapoor can feel a positive “energy flow seamless­ly” through this minimalist setting—its influence lending to the intention with which he and his team create every collec­tion. Spirituality would also likely mark Kapoor’s future pursuits. “I want to do much more. It may be displayed through the brand’s aesthetic but doesn’t have anything to do with clothes,” he says. One day, he aims to open holistic cen­tres that make spirituality and wellness accessible and aspirational, especially among younger generations.

Future dreams notwithstanding, Kapoor lives in the present, still dedi­cated to building the brand which now employs 125 people across departments, including his mother. “She has been with me since the beginning,” he says. The brand’s recognisability keeps growing, not only by its designs but also by the power of its logo, which is written in the Devanagari script. Initially introduced for a season, the logo took on a life of its own. So much so that some customers began to ask if the logo could feature their own surnames, like a personal monogram. Meanwhile, others tried to send back their old purchases for the labels to be replaced with the new typeface. Little wonder that Kapoor 2.0 will also feature Devanagari.

Kapoor is now preparing for the MFW in September, his debut in the wo­menswear calendar. Store launches are in the works, beginning with Delhi later this year and then Mumbai. The brand has expanded from clothing to accesso­ries—recycled leather bags, small goods and accessories; the brand is also looking into home and lifestyle expansion with an eye on experiential concepts. Is this growth curve a quest for excitement or peace? In Kapoor’s creative universe, the two coexist.

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