'South Asian designers are telling stories with clarity'

From the Himalayas to New York, fashion designer Prabal Gurung has built a global brand rooted in heritage, precision and purpose. In his memoir Walk Like A Girl is he reflects on identity, femininity and the responsibility of building institutions beyond fashion. In an interview with Sugandha Mukherjee, the 46-year-old speaks about cultural duality, the theatre of the Met Gala and why Indian craft is not a limitation but an advantage. Edited excerpts:

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Your memoir Walk Like A Girl is deeply personal. You’ve often spoken about growing up between Nepal and India before building your label in New York. How did those early cultural experiences shape your aesthetic and your sense of identity in fashion?

Growing up between Nepal and India gave me dual lenses very early in life. Nepal gave me mysticism, mountains, silence, spirituality. India gave me vibrancy, colour, cinema, texture, contradiction. Both gave me resilience.

When you grow up in the Himalayas, scale changes your perspective. You understand humility in the presence of something vast. When you grow up in South Asia, you understand ornamentation, ritual, craft, and the emotional power of clothing. Moving to New York added discipline and modernity to that foundation. It sharpened my sense of structure, tailoring, and business. My aesthetic is therefore never singular. It is emotional yet precise. Ornate yet controlled. Sensual yet architectural.

The title Walk Like A Girl feels both political and personal. How do you define strength and femininity today, especially in an industry that still struggles with stereotypes?

Strength, to me, is not aggression. It is self-possession. For many years, femininity was framed as something decorative or secondary. But the women who raised me were neither ornamental nor fragile. They were pillars. They carried families, communities, entire ecosystems of responsibility. Today, I define femininity as emotional intelligence, resilience, empathy, and clarity. It is not softness in the sense of weakness, it is softness in the sense of depth. In fashion, we still wrestle with outdated binaries. But I believe the most powerful designers are those who expand definitions rather than reinforce them.

You’ve become a regular at the Met Gala. How do you approach the Met differently from a runway show? Does spectacle outweigh wearability there?