TURNING BACK TIME

In just seven years, Turn Black has risen to become one of the chicest labels in the country. In an issue dedicated to throwbacks, Ashwini Arun Kumar dives deep into co-founder and creative director's personal history to discover how black became an unlikely source of hope for her

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In physics, black is not a colour but an absence of light. In a cultural context, this translates to a lack of joy, making it an unholy colour often reserved for mourning. The Goth subculture is dedicated to the defiants who enjoy its macabre and melancholic romance. But, for many who don't think of the colour in such extremes, it is a matter of practicality, and, for someone such as Nutan Dayal, co-founder and creative director of Turn Black - a label dedicated to making only black clothing - it is also comforting.

Born into a North Indian family in New Delhi, Nutan never aspired to become a designer. At her father's behest, she started studying for the civil services before giving up just three months in. She then dabbled in many occupations - from being social media manager for an art gallery in her early days to co-founding Artszia, an e-commerce platform for up and coming artists, in 2014, with her life partner Amit Chauhan, and starting a physical gallery in Delhi's Haus Khaz area and later turning that into a marketing agency. Funds were limited - often not enough to even shop for clothes. "For the longest time, I would just live in black clothes bought from inexpensive stores such as Decathlon that would sell T-shirts for as little as ₹99," Nutan admits. "We just didn't have any money!" The agency eventually became a success, but work felt monotonous and limited to designing creatives for their F&B clients. "My creative choices were not flowing in the right direction," she says.