Fashion's final boss

Tarun Tahiliani was there when Indian fashion was born. He's why you wishlist corset lehengas and leather bandhgalas. And 30 years on, he's excited about the future (but wary of Gen Z). Here's the OG: Sharp, tireless, unafraid

- Riddhi Doshi [e-mail]

Fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani isn't mincing his words. At 62, with 37 years at the top of the game, there are no “Hmm” moments. He doesn't sit on the fence with his opinions. Indian brides today? They're a confused lot, he says. Showstoppers on the runway? That must stop. Promising young designers? They're better off working for big brands than running a business.

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Indian fashion isn't used to such truth bombs. It's a world of anonymous gossip accounts, poor tailoring covered up with sequins, flattering HNIs, and flashing dazzling smiles even when you're going broke. So, it helps that Tahiliani is the OG (his Tarun Tahiliani label turned 30 last year) and he's seen more styles come and go than we've added to our moodboards. We asked him about what's moving the needle in the business, whether we'll ever look past bling, and what's stayed the same. He's thorny. Try to keep up.

Sense the pattern

Tahiliani wasn't born into fashion. His father was an Admiral in the Navy, his mother was an engineer. His first job: Selling oilfield equipment. “I was losing my mind there,” he recalls. His heart lay in creative fields, but “fashion designers were regarded as glorified tailors”, he says. “My father almost had a stroke when I told him I wanted to study fashion.”

He did anyway. And in 1987, at age 25, he opened Ensemble, India's first multi-designer retail store, with his wife Sailaja. The world looked different then. The rich commissioned the handful of top brand-name designers around then, for bridal wear - which cost about ₹25,000. Everyone else just went to the neighbourhood aunty who was good with patterns and charged ₹5,000. No Autumn-Winter or Spring-Summer collections. No malls, no backless bustiers paired with a 2kg skirt.