A Designer Was Ready for India's Fashion Moment

New York Times

11 hours ago

In June, Kartik Kumra was confronted, for the first time in his life, with a scrum of reporters.
His brand, Kartik Research, had just made its runway debut at Paris Fashion Week, showcasing a collection of soft-edged clothing infused with the visual language of India. A pair of beige hand-spun pleated linen pants were spruced up with floral embroidery swirling around the ankle of one leg. And a black blazer was transformed with a flash of gold Banarasi silk peeking through the lapel.
It just so happened that Mr. Kumra's show had taken place in the middle of a season in which India seemed to be on the mood board of the luxury fashion world. Prada sent models down its men's wear runway in footwear that closely resembled Kolhapuri sandals. A few days later, at the Louis Vuitton men's wear show, the brand's creative director, Pharrell Williams, recreated the ancient Indian game of Snakes and Ladders as a set for his show.
After Mr. Kumra's show ended, the assembled reporters peppered him with questions. 'What did you think of the L.V. show?' he recalled them asking during a recent interview. 'What about the Prada show?'
It became abundantly clear to Mr. Kumra, 25, that India's sartorial choices were being repackaged as trendy. And that his brand had found itself at the center of that moment.
Even having a presence at Fashion Week, alongside what he called 'the big guys,' was once unthinkable for Mr. Kumra, who started his brand four years ago in his college dorm room as he studied economics at the University of Pennsylvania. At that time, he had no experience in fashion or design.
But his brand's ability to reframe Indian crafts in the context of Western fashion has attracted a loyal — or, as Mr. Kumra described it, 'sticky' — following and prepared him for the mainstream spotlight.
His work has been seen on Kendrick Lamar, Stephen Curry, Brad Pitt, Riz Ahmed, Lewis Hamilton and Paul Mescal. When the brand released a limited run of embroidered Converse sneakers in May, the shoes sold out almost immediately. In 2023, Mr. Kumra's brand was a semifinalist for the coveted L.V.M.H. Prize for Young Fashion Designers.
Kartik Research is now stocked in 70 locations around the world, including Mr Porter and Selfridges. Next spring, it will arrive at Harrods in London. Mr. Kumra will also introduce a line of women's wear at Bergdorf Goodman in March.
'Next season, India is not going to be the reference for them,' he said, referring to companies like Prada and Louis Vuitton. 'But this is our thing. We built a business on it and we're going to keep doing it.'
A few weeks after his show in Paris, at the brand's new brick-and-mortar store in the busy Dimes Square neighborhood in downtown Manhattan, Mr. Kumra was manning the floor. In one corner stood a classic Indian straw daybed. On the wall, there was a painting of Hindu mythology. A live cricket match — India versus England — was streaming on his laptop.
A single rack of clothes ran the length of the store. Each garment had made its way through an 'independent universe of small makers,' Mr. Kumra said. 'The real experts — the master embroiderers, weavers, printers.' Their work isn't scalable, nor can you find their phone numbers online. To work with them requires building on-the-ground relationships.
A white shirt on the rack, for example, was handmade by a man in the state of Gujarat, using what is known as bhujodi weaving. That weaver noticed, during one of Mr. Kumra's visits to his workshop, that Mr. Kumra was wearing handloom denim pants. 'He was like, 'Oh, let me connect you to my handloom denim guys,'' Mr. Kumra said. 'And I went and visited them — they were a couple hours away — and now they make our denim pants.'
Piece by piece, Mr. Kumra has built a network of artisans who aren't easily accessible. That gives Mr. Kumra a leg up on brands that parachute in and wax poetic about Indian craft for a season or two, said Julie Ragolia, a New York-based stylist and consultant who became a mentor to Mr. Kumra through a program called Mr Porter Futures.
'He understands that if he's bringing his community into this process, he's helping so many people to understand the value of India from a deeper perspective and not just one of borrowing,' said Ms. Ragolia, who has dressed a number of clients, including Mr. Ahmed, in Kartik Research.
The clothes themselves feel couture and luxurious, she added. 'You feel the hands that have made them,' she said — they are all a little imperfect and no two garments are alike — and yet, 'while there's such immensity of technique, it's not fussy. It's very wearable.'
Mr. Kumra, who grew up in New Delhi, had a fervent interest in fashion and streetwear as a consumer long before conceiving Kartik Research. Through college and high school, he would resell sneakers. He admired the work of Dries Van Noten, and he was, like so many teenagers, a Supreme enthusiast. He also enjoyed sketching and doodling.
When Covid shuttered universities in 2020, Mr. Kumra, who had an internship in finance lined up, decided instead to spend his free time in New Delhi putting together a business plan. His mother shuttled him around the country to meet with artisans. Some of the money he earned from reselling sneakers — roughly $5,000 — became the start-up capital for what was then Karu MFG — 'karu' is the Sanskrit word for 'artisan,' and 'MFG' is short for 'manufacturing.'
He cold-called factories and found one, on the brink of closing as a result of the pandemic, that agreed to create 22 garments for him. 'The look book cost 1,000 bucks — a friend shot it, and we got models for 200 bucks,' he said. 'The location was free, it was 10 minutes away from my house.'
Mr. Kumra then jumped into the Discord channel of 'Throwing Fits,' a podcast for men's wear enthusiasts, to share his designs and solicit feedback. 'I was just really blown away — this young guy was a fan of us, but when we saw his work we were becoming a fan of him,' said one of the podcast's hosts, Lawrence Schlossman. 'I actually remember my first piece of feedback was just like drop the MFG.'
By the time Mr. Kumra returned to Philadelphia to finish his degree in 2022, he was running a full-blown business. A stylist messaged him one night about one of his cardigans: 'Yo, Kendrick's wearing it.' As in the Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper.
That was the first time, in Mr. Kumra's recollection, that his friends realized he wasn't lying about having started a brand.
As he builds Kartik Research, Mr. Kumra is not taking a salary. His mother still helps out, working on the finance and accounting side. It was just in the last year that Mr. Kumra hired two designers.
In a cheeky acknowledgment of the heightened interest and momentum around Indian fashion, Mr. Kumra's own inspirations, and how, he said, work from there could one day be considered 'globally aspirational,' the Kartik Research show in Paris in June was accompanied with a look book.
Its title? 'How to Make It in India.'