courtesy of JJ Valaya
text by Parrie Chhajed
Every July, Delhi transforms. The city, with its monsoon skies and imperial boulevards, becomes a fantasy stage. At the heart of it lies India Couture Week, the country’s most awaited celebration of craftsmanship and couture—a sacred space where heritage finds reinvention, and where the past and future walk the same ramp.
This year’s edition, held at the iconic Taj Palace Hotel and curated by the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) in collaboration with Reliance Brands, was not merely a fashion week. It was a theatrical odyssey into identity, memory, and legacy. Across eight days, the 2025 ICW staged a poetic conversation between textile and technique, between the deeply personal and the universally grand.
Founded in 2008, India Couture Week has evolved into a cultural cornerstone, marking the intersection where India’s bridal traditions, artisanal crafts, and conceptual fashion converge. It is the country’s answer to Paris Haute Couture, not in mimicry but in spirit—deeply rooted in the handmade and the ceremonial, with a flair for showmanship unique to Indian design.
Over the years, ICW has launched defining moments in the careers of its designers and positioned India on the global luxury fashion map. It remains one of the few platforms where embroidery still breathes, and where storytelling is as important as silhouette.
If last year leaned into romance and nostalgia, 2025 looked inward. This was a couture week about identity—collective and individual, ancestral and imagined. It echoed a quiet defiance against homogeneity, embracing maximalism with a sense of meaning.
While every show had its own story to tell, five designers rose as the week's emotional and artistic anchors: Rahul Mishra, Amit Aggarwal, JJ Valaya, Aisha Rao, and Ritu Kumar. Together, they created a chorus of craft with each speaking a different dialect, yet somehow in harmony.
Rahul Mishra – Becoming Love
Rahul Mishra opened the week with a transcendental collection titled Becoming Love, which unfolded like a philosophical poem in motion. Inspired by Sufi mysticism and Gustav Klimt’s golden canvases, Mishra’s couture offered seven stages of love, each captured in finely hand-embroidered stories across silk organza, velvet, and tulle.
There was restraint, there was magnificence. In one moment, a gown glistened like Klimt’s “The Kiss.” In another, a lehenga whispered the pain of longing. With Tamannaah Bhatia gliding across the runway in a floral, sculpted gown, Mishra once again reaffirmed his position as a couturier of soul, stitching emotion into every sequin.
Amit Aggarwal – Arcanum
If Mishra spoke of emotion, Amit Aggarwal answered with introspection. His collection Arcanum—a word meaning ‘mystery’—explored identity through the architecture of DNA. Using his signature polymer techniques and handwoven metallics, Aggarwal built garments like sacred codes: twisted helixes, cocooned corsets, and chrysalis gowns.
But behind the science was softness. There was something deeply moving about how structure met surrender. Couture here was not just worn—it was inhabited. Aggarwal reminded us that even the future has ancestry.
JJ Valaya – East
No one stages drama quite like JJ Valaya, and East—his closing show and a celebration of 33 years in fashion—was an imperial epic. Drawing from East Asian tapestries, Ottoman silks, and Rajput opulence, the collection was architectural and extravagant. Intricately embroidered jackets, obi-style belts, brocaded cloaks, and voluminous skirts brought a regal, globe-trotting vision to life.
Rasha Thadani and Ibrahim Ali Khan closed the show with old-world poise and new-world flair. It was a fitting finale—part history lesson, part fantasy film.
Aisha Rao – Wild at Heart
Making her ICW debut, Aisha Rao was the season’s freshest dream. Her collection Wild at Heart bloomed with lotus petals, banana leaves, and rose-gold mosaics—each appliqué whispering a kind of untamed tenderness. She layered nature into couture like a fable.
Sara Ali Khan floated down the runway in a fantastical Banarasi lehenga—half fairy, half warrior princess. Rao's world is one where rebellion is delicate and fantasy is embroidered with thought. And for a first showing, it was unforgettable.
Ritu Kumar – Threads of Time: Reimagined
A quiet storm came in the form of Ritu Kumar, one of the original matriarchs of Indian fashion. In Threads of Time: Reimagined, Kumar revisited and revitalized her archives, reworking iconic prints, paisleys, and kalidars for a new generation. It felt like a love letter to Indian textiles, with the wisdom of decades and the freshness of reinvention.
This wasn’t nostalgia—it was memory made malleable.
What We Saw, What We’ll Remember
This year, ICW saw a return to tactility. Couture was about touch—embroideries you could feel with your eyes, textures that moved like memories. There was structure, but also surrender. Motifs of roots, DNA, nature, and spirituality ran across collections like leitmotifs in a symphony.
We saw metallics meet brocade, corsetry meet kalidars, and flowers sprout from pleats. And above all, we witnessed a reclamation of Indian identity in high fashion—not as tokenism, but as a language only we know how to speak.
India’s couture scene is now more intimate and more international than ever before. With young voices like Aisha Rao stepping in with fresh fantasy and veterans like Rahul Mishra and Amit Aggarwal pushing boundaries between concept and craft, couture is evolving. No longer tethered only to bridal, it's becoming something more—wearable philosophy, artful autobiography, emotion in motion.
India Couture Week 2025 was not just a showcase—it was a soulprint. A reflection of who we are, where we come from, and what we dare to become. It asked its designers to remember, to imagine, to feel. And in doing so, it gave us all permission to dream aloud—in silk, metal, embroidery, and memory.
This wasn’t just couture.
It was a confession.
It was a conversation.
And it was the kind of beauty you don’t just wear—you carry it in your bones.