The past, present and future of Tarun Tahiliani

A forthcoming book on the couturier documents almost three decades of his work to dress the global consumer

- Pooja Singh

There's one big problem in Indian fashion: Many designers have not archived their collections. If they don't keep a record of their sketches, swatches, look-books, fabrics, or the karigars (craftspersons) they work with, it's difficult to trace their development. This, in turn, will make it almost impossible to map the history of Indian fashion, Divia Patel, curator of the South Asian department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, had told Lounge last year.

That's why a forthcoming book documenting the journey of Tarun Tahiliani, the man and the luxury fashion brand, becomes important. Tarun Tahiliani: Journey To India (Roli Books), which releases on 16 November, is co-written by Tahiliani, and Alia Allana, an investigative journalist at Object magazine. Understandably then, it's part memoir and part deep dive into how a boy, born in 1962 in a Sindhi household in Mumbai, went from attending art and piano classes in polio braces during school, to studying business management at the US' Wharton School of Business, selling oil-field equipment, and then going on to become one of the architects of Indian contemporary fashion.

Photographs, sketches and anecdotes create a vivid documentation of close to three decades of the designer's work: from co-founding Ensemble, a multi-designer boutique that introduced the concept of luxury retail to India in 1987, to presenting his first solo show in London in 1994, to founding the Tarun Tahiliani Design Studio in 1995 in Delhi, to starting Tasva, a more accessible menswear brand in partnership with the conglomerate Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd.