Rahul Mishra: Bringing The Cosmos Alive

A veteran at Paris Haute Couture Week and Paris fashion weeks, the Delhi-based couturier journeys Indian craft to sustain thousands of weavers and artisans, and create a fashion language

- Priya Kumari Rana

THE FIRST INDIAN DESIGNER to have been invited to showcase at the apogee of custom-made fashion — the Paris Haute Couture Week — Rahul Mishra, a physicist by education (before picking up his pinking shears as a student of fashion design), has been exploring the metaphysical. Time dilation, time travel, and relativity are not concepts one normally sees brought to life on the ramp — but on this Parisian January afternoon at the Salon Imperial of The Westin — the outfits — gowns, pantsuits, dresses, jackets — on display meld a million universes into a tiny microcosm. Especially, with Rahul’s trademark 3D embroidery; entire worlds, an underwater ocean with colourful critters, to a galaxy with a giant multi-hued jellyfish and glistening algae, to planets like Saturn in a constellation, meeting up in a sartorial explosion.

“Big or small is relative,” says Rahul. “That happens in a black hole. The universe was created in a big bang, from an infinitely small particle — and there are zillions of atoms in a human body — this is the mindbending alternate reality.”

But what is not part of an alternate reality is the fact that Rahul Mishra, born in a village close to Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh, is now firmly entrenched in the firmament of haute couture — this was his seventh season there, plus 13 seasons of ready-to-wear in Paris. “It’s beautiful how we maintained our slot on the opening day of the week,” says Rahul. “You had Schiaparelli, Dior, my show after, and Giambattista Valli ending the day. You can get overwhelmed, as you put your heart and soul into it.”