Cut From The Same Cloth

For RITU KUMAR and son AMRISH, fashioning a new India is what keeps their 48-year-old label going strong. The duo shares with Vogue how the Urban Gypsy collection, showcased here on muse and actor Yami Gautam, neatly ties together the distinct fabrics of their generations.

- Akanksha Kamath

At 72, Ritu Kumar still spends busy days at her design studio in Delhi, meticulously investigating design histories and envisioning ways of creating a wardrobe laden with India’s ancient handicraft culture. Her label, which started as ‘Ritu’s Boutique’ in 1969, occupying half a grocery store Kumar shared with her friend, ubiquitously (and accidentally) grew into a name synonymous with the country’s design narrative. In many ways, the idiosyncratic artist-turned-designer’s career has become a barometer of change, heralding a modern outlook while still grasping at tradition.

For her passion turned mammoth business, Kumar took on a reverse approach in reviving Indian handicrafts. Starting at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, she dug up their archives to backtrack to the source. “India had a repertoire of designs sitting unseen and unknown, and this made me very sad. The V&A has the best Indian prints in their archives. It was a kind of reverse movement where I bought those designs from them, brought them back to India and recreated them here in the areas in which they originated. Very exciting,” reminisces Kumar.

The designer has lived many firsts— first to set up a standalone brick-and mortar store when boutique retailing was a far-flung notion; first to tap into the reserves of indigenous textiles and weaves; and first to make it to the windows of Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue in New York.