A wandering soul

Whether it’s her time spent studying the craft clusters of northern India or making pit stops at the local farms where she grew up, designer Saloni Lodha’s travels through India provide answers to the why and how of who she is and what her label does.

- Akanksha Kamath

“I love flying into Bombay. I just don’t get that feeling of home in any other Indian city,” says Saloni Lodha. The Hong Kong-based, India-raised designer, who shuttles between London (where her team holds fort for her label) and India (where her big fat Indian family resides across different zip codes), is currently clocking in her longest period in Hong Kong with her husband Giorgio and two boys, Amedeo (7) and Attilio (3). The result has been a certain nostalgia that peppers every sentence as we speak of her second home over the phone. “I was lucky enough to spend a solid month in India in February. Travel to India, for me, is a twice-yearly occurrence and it is always a mix of work and family time.” Her eponymous label, Saloni, is manufactured in India, and her teams come from Hong Kong and London for routine research and development when creating a new collection, shooting campaigns or preparing her next big India-inspired event (cue the label’s three-day Holi Saloni event in 2018 in Udaipur). We speak to the designer about the India that informs her personal and professional world.

“The values of ancient wisdom are the foundation for the way I think.”

I was brought up in a Jain family. Every summer was spent travelling across Rajasthan, visiting Jain temples. We would spend hours chanting and watching the view from these shrines. When I was in India in February, my mum took both the kids to perform all the pujas that I grew up doing, and they happily followed and enacted all the rituals.