VOGUE India

Many years ago at a fashion magazine party in Delhi, I spotted a journalist turned author whose work I admired. His debut novel had affected me at such a fundamental level, I remember becoming an angrier person the week I was reading it. Mustering up the courage to admit this to him, I walked over and introduced myself. He accepted the accolades and indulged me in small talk about preferred literary genres.Then, he said, “I’m surprised you read about politics, I didn’t think this would interest you fashion types.” That interaction taught me two important lessons. One, heroes are human—and the truth of them is often more disappointing than the fiction you’ve written in your head. And two, even the smartest people misunderstand fashion. And by extension, the community that’s…

Amitava Saha Photographer, ‘Mind the cap’, page 194 What’s your unpopular opinion regarding fashion? Chasing every micro-trend feels exciting, but it dates you quickly. A clean shirt, well-cut trousers and a solid shoe don’t shout for attention, they just stay relevant, year after year. A Mumbai-based photographer, Amitava Saha has honed his craft while exploring style, identity and visual storytelling. Diya Colaço Illustrator What is a fashion hill you are willing to die on? In a world that values constant consumption and is forgoing artistic traditions in favour of machines, craft is the only real luxury. Nothing can replace the human touch; it’s what makes art meaningful. Diya Colaço is a visual designer and illustrator whose practice explores the culmination of craft, culture and contemporary visuals. Avani Rai Photographer, ‘Emerald…

Assam’s muga silk comes from the cocoons of a silkworm species that cannot exist outside the specific climatic conditions of the Brahmaputra Valley. Unlike most silks, muga is not dyed—the luminous gold is inherent to the fibre itself. It even becomes glossier with wear. Traditionally, almost every household maintained small silk farms in their backyard, but that system is growing increasingly fragile. “One early morning last April, I received a call from one of our farmers,” recalls Jagrity Phukan, a designer and the founder of Way of Living Studio, whose Assam-based textile practice works primarily with muga, eri and mulberry silks, as well as cane, bamboo and various indigenous fibres. “She was crying. There had been an unseasonal hailstorm overnight, and the entire muga crop for that season was gone.…

Sunshine streams through soft, white almond blossoms that dot the orchard I’m standing in. An orchestra of birds chirrup and in the distance, a glacial brook gurgles. Above, hawks ride the wind thermals, looping through the air. Almost reading my thoughts, Rigzin Lachic says, “You know those soundtracks they play in fancy spas when they tell you to close your eyes and relax? That’s what a regular day in Ladakh sounds like.” The owner of Dolkhar, a boutique hotel in Leh, tells me that after corporate stints in Japan and New Delhi, this picturesque landscape is what called her back to launch a small hotel and restaurant that has since been featured on Time’s 2023 list of the World’s Greatest Places. When Ladakh opened for tourists in 1978, all of…

It was a regular weeknight—the groaning of construction cranes and Mumbai’s refusal to pause playing in the background as the doorbell announced the arrival of my manchow soup. I had cued up an episode of Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud, which was convenient because she runs the podcast like a therapy session. I had a deadline breathing down my neck, a shoot in Tamil Nadu going nowhere, and no solution in sight. So I had my therapy via osmosis. Jonathan Anderson, the creative director of Dior, was tonight’s guest. “Looking back, it was the idea of dressing up to feel like you weren’t in something, or not part of something. It was almost a fantasy act,” he said, speaking about his wardrobe choices as a teenager in Belfast. “I think…

Last fall, after decades of vision so poor I couldn’t recognise my closest friends across a small room without glasses, I paid $10,000 for ICL surgery, a newish Lasik alternative in which permanent contact lenses are installed in one’s eyeballs. Besides the somewhat daunting, monthlong course of prescription eye drops that followed, recovery was swift. I’ve had no major medical complications, only subtle psychological ones: Improving my vision, I realised, impaired the way I saw myself. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I looked in the mirror and saw only my face staring back at me. No brow-hiding frames, no eye-distorting lenses. And most crucially, perhaps, was my nose: bare, no longer horizontally bifurcated by a ridge of black acetate. In a good mood, on…