A TRADITIONAL MIND WITH GLOBAL VISION RAHUL MISHRA

From his first showcase at Paris in 2014 to launching his latest ready-to-wear luxury brand at Haute Couture Week in 2024, this designer has come full circle. In a tête-à-tête with Brides Today, Rahul Mishra goes down memory lane, voicing his love for the craft that fuelled his success.

- NAYARE ALI

This is the remarkable narrative of a small-town boy, who grew up in the nondescript hamlet of Malhausi near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. But Rahul Mishra always yearned for a larger-thanlife saga. One of India's top couturiers today, he was first noticed at Lakmé Fashion Week in 2006, where he made his debut showcasing cotton handlooms from Kerala. With a hunger to prove his pedigree, that young man has come a long way to his internationally acclaimed current avatar that's honoured by the global fashion community.

The latest feather in Mishra's busy cap is his new label AFEW Rahul Mishra, which he launched with his designer wife Divya Mishra. He showcased AFEW-an acronym representing air, fire, earth and water-with a private presentation at Paris Fashion Week in September, but India's couture-loving fashionistas will have to wait till December to get their hands on the effortless, ready-to-wear luxury wear for women. The collection draws from "the eclectic identity of urban India and its connection to the ethnic landscape that surrounds it. It draws inspiration from the Indian who meticulously weaves the country's chaos into a vibrant tapestry of love, resilience and self-esteem," he says.

While the fashion fraternity may be purely enamoured by Mishra's glamorous designs, there's a heartwarming backstory to this series.

It emulates his sense of identification with small-town Indians— women, in this case-who have made their mark globally. "CEO of Chanel Leena Nair was born in Kolhapur, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas comes from Bareilly. When you come from a small town, you have to dream bigger than someone privileged who was brought up in a metro. That was the idea behind this collection. When such a woman is ready to conquer the world, she does so with the right mix of vulnerability, courage, and conviction. That's precisely what I wanted to portray," the couturier explains.