Rahul Mishra Couture Fall 23 collection

"The finest creator, God must be an embroiderer.”

With reality and imagination woven into its fabric, 'We, The People' strives to draw the enablers of couture, the artisans, to the face of its narrative. It envisions them as more than creators but as the juncture where artistic expression meets age-old craft and technical prowess that allows them the godlike ability to turn imagination into reality.

Surfaces from 'We, The People' are an articulation of the fashion worker's trance interlaced with their immediate reality. An embroiderer, seated in a concrete cube on a cushioned mat as they loop, knot and pull silk thread out of plain fabric through imprints of tiny motifs with a sharp needle hook called the aari. For hours, days and months spent on the same piece of fabric, an individual is painstakingly looping a stitch per second on yards of fabric to make one couture garment. Sometimes we wonder if their meditative state of uninterrupted focus transports their mind to a parallel imaginative universe of the vivid embroidery artworks.

'We, The People' is a work of wonderment that assumes if an embroiderer would really envision the adda (embroidery frame) turning to a lotus pond, and if there is an instance when they feel themselves in the Sundarbans amidst its virgin forest, caressing a majestic tiger.

In the words of Albert Einstein, 'Imagination encircles the world’

Made in India for the world, ‘We, The People’ articulates itself in a contemporary fashion while highlighting the quintessential, slow handwork of our atelier. Including the embroidery period, each piece is realised over an average of three thousand hours depending on the silhouette. This season, the ‘look’ is especially glamorous and celebratory as the silhouettes reference from the creative excellence of Master Erté. Our intention remains to create innovative & conscious creations that transcend art and fashion.

Originating from our creative director’s first hand experiences, the collection’s primary inspirations are channeled through our team of designers, embroiderers, tailors and others in-between, as a collective dream. Eventually, the atelier begins to function as a complex organism with each organ working towards a common goal. It is our constant intention to rightfully acknowledge and commend the contribution of our community to the maison’s founding vision of cultural conservation.

With this collection, we also observe the brand’s efforts towards the reverse migration of embroidery artisans from the densely populated sub-factory set ups of large cities to their local communities in the Indian villages.

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