There’s a phrase doing the rounds lately. At the Amazon India Fashion Week Autumn/ Winter 2016, they called it India Modern, and it was the season’s defining theme. At the newly launched lifestyle label Nicobar, they call it the more straightforward ‘Modern India’. Direct as it may be, for founders Simran Lal and Raul Rai, it’s an idea that’s much bigger than it seems. It’s an ethos that’s steeped in ‘creating a modern Indian way of living, dressing, and looking at the world’. It is an outlook that recognises that the urban Indian’s worldview is as much about looking inward as it is outward. This is the philosophy that Nicobar is built upon, and one that made it the season’s most awaited and popular launch.

They’ve achieved this by putting forth collections of apparel, and home and travel accessories that are minimal but ever-so-slightly whimsical, Indian at heart and global in appeal. Dresses and skirts in gossamer chanderi, and men’s trousers an kurta-shirts in linen and cotton, all transition easily from day to ni Lotus and palm tree motifs dot its stoneware plates and bowls, alo salad bowls, cheese boards, and sushi platters. And Nicobar en the sale of individual pieces rather than traditional dinner sets, p make-your-own ethos, which extends to its clothes as well.