Threading Three Decades Together

Designer Anamika Khanna is working with her twin sons, still dressing global icons, and watching Indian fashion claim its place on the world stage all while staying true to her instinct

- Ananya Shankar

At 8 a.m. on a Saturday, designer Anamika Khanna sips her coffee with oat milk, and doesn't run to work like she once used to. Thirty years into her career, there's a quiet confidence from having survived, shaped and helped define modern Indian fashion.

The designer launched her eponymous label in 1995 and began retailing at Ensemble. She has spent three decades questioning silhouettes, reworking heritage and resisting the pressure to become predictable.

Today, Khanna remains busy with runway shows and collections, but the context has changed dramatically. When she became the first Indian designer to show at Paris Fashion Week back in 2007, there was no social media, no instant communication, and little understanding of Indian fashion on a global stage. Indian designers were routinely questioned — on quality, wearability, relevance, often dismissed as being “too Indian”.

One of her earliest, defining risks came when she reimagined the sari for a show — cutting it, pairing it with trousers, and sending it down the runway at a time when such acts were considered sacrilegious. Backstage, she panicked. “If the press thrashed you back then, you were finished,” she says. Instead, it reshaped how Indian women dressed.

All in the Family

Today, Indian craft walks global runways. Kolhapuri chappals are reinterpreted in luxury houses. International brands want to enter India. “It’s not the same world anymore,” Khanna says. “Now I have the bandwidth to say ‘I’m putting myself out there’, and if somebody criticises something I do, I can take it. It’s not going to finish my career.”