VOGUE India

INDIA WAS WELL and truly in fashion this past month. Taking stock of a jampacked few weeks of shows, openings, shoots and red carpets, I can’t help but reflect on the time I started here at Vogue India in September 2021. The industry, and indeed our country, was at ground zero, devastated by the pandemic and just starting to come blinking out of the shadows. Just over a year and a half later, India was teeming with international visitors and a burgeoning creative scene as Dior staged its Fall 2023 show in Mumbai for the first time, cementing the city’s status as one of the global fashion centres of the world. Around the same time, actor, newly minted mother and undeniably India’s sweetheart Alia Bhatt was photographed by Vivek Vadoliya for…

VIVEK VADOLIYA Vadoliya is a British-Indian photographer and director whose portraiture focuses on spotlighting unconventional communities in novel ways. In ‘Wind at her back’, he captures one of Bollywood’s finest actors, new mother Alia Bhatt, who stands at the edge of global domination as she prepares for her Hollywood debut. Page 70 Karuna Ezara Parikh Ezara Parikh is a poet and author of The Heart Asks Pleasure First and Where Stories Gather. Contributing two stories to this issue, in ‘Fragrance and Memory’, she examines an Indian perfumery that combines poetry, performance and compositions of scent to transcend borders, while in ‘Thread bare’, she explores how actor Joyeeta Dutta holds on to her mother’s mekhela chador saris as a reminder of home. Page 48 and page 20 NAVELI CHOYAL Based between Delhi and Ajmer, Choyal is…

Check republic Coastal corners play muse to our seaside escapades with breezy shirts woven in signature Goan Kunbi weave Twisted trysts Take your pick from pretty bows and a bangle or two to tie in with your checkered wardrobe Under wraps The new skirt commandments take the art of wearing dhotis to new levels. Team Kanchi handloom with Tamil Kurinjipadi checks to experiment with your waist-down layers Fresh cut Pair handwoven checks with your local burst of blossoms, like gajras, and scents that say plucked-for-the-moment PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANT: KARISHMA HARI. MODELS: KIRAN VARGHESE/FAZE MANAGEMENT; BHARATH/FEAT ARTISTS; KAVI RAJ; ARYA SHUBHAN; PRAVALLIKA RAJU…

So where is home for you?” I begin by asking actor Joyeeta Dutta what I think is a fairly straightforward geographic question. The images before me have something of the domestic—not ‘homely’ per se, but with the comfort and quiet we associate with home. But— “That’s a loaded question for me,”she says, and we deep-dive, immediately. “I grew up in Guwahati, moved to Tezpur for boarding school when I was nine, then went off to college in Delhi, and finally came to Mumbai. Initially home was somewhere I came to for the holidays. But maybe,” she pauses, “home is the place I’m not in.” Dutta, who made her screen debut in Mira Nair’s A Suitable Boy, has a childlike voice which serves to shake you up more than usual when she…

CARTIER Fables around kings and their gems and the magic of the old world may be preserved in the worn-out and aged pages of texts, scriptures and books, but the ever-present lustre of India’s heirlooms has never dimmed through the decades. The Maharaja of Nawanagar’s cascading necklace, known as the Jeanne Toussaint necklace, which has now been dismantled to create separate jewellery pieces, featured natural diamonds that were the size of golf balls—something that Jacques Cartier described as “a superb realisation of a connoisseur’s dream”. Or perhaps take a second look at the famous ceremonial choker of Sir Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala—the one seen adorning the neck of Emma Chamberlain at the 2022 Met Gala—these are just a part of Cartier’s deep-seated relationship with India’s treasures. Cartier’s association with…

WHEN PALAK SHAH MARRIED AVNISH CHHABRIA, the co-founder of Wellbeing Nutrition, in February, the couple celebrated their union surrounded by their loved ones, beginning with an engagement party and puja in Benares (the bride’s hometown) followed by a host of celebrations in Chandigarh. It wasn’t long after the two got engaged in August of last year that Shah began dialling up her favourite designers (who also happen to be her friends) to get started on her outfits. Even before the venue for the nuptials was finalised, the bride-to-be knew she wanted to work with Kunal Rawal, Gaurav Gupta and Shantnu & Nikhil to bring her wedding wardrobe to life. “I believe when two strong sensibilities come together, you create something that’s out of the box. When it came to picking the…