Drama, flamboyance, theatrics: Rahul Mishra wouldn’t dream of sending a collection down the runway without more than a dash of all that. His imagination draws from the traditions of his Indian homeland and whatever inspiring book happened to be at hand: A meditative Sufi text? A treaty on Gustav Klimt’s gilded paintings? Why not both?
To start this season, Mishra sourced from a Sufi verse describing the seven stages of love—a topic that’s been conspicuously absent from the world news lately (unless you count celebrity weddings and breakups, of course). Attraction, infatuation, surrender, reverence, devotion, obsession, death, and the inevitable rebirth—because no matter how many times love steamrolls our souls, we remain hopelessly game for another round.
Each stage was translated into its own sartorial moment. “It was like doing seven collections in one,” Mishra quipped backstage, and he wasn’t entirely exaggerating. Luckily, he has an atelier of artisans capable of transforming even his most pyrotechnic flights into garments that teeter on the edge of fantasy and red carpet reality. Or at least reality as defined by Cardi B. Arriving nearly an hour late at the show at the Collège des Bernardins, she had all eyes on her in one of the collection’s most explosive creations: a burgundy body-hugging gown entirely embroidered in sequins, with a ramage of free-standing roses bursting forth in full bloom. It symbolized love at its blinding peak; when reason evaporates, roses miraculously have no more thorns, and they just smell divine.
The opening look set the bar high: a gold-threaded heart-shaped armor encasing the body in a sheer aura, yet another display of the Mishra atelier’s prodigious talents. Surrender took shape in a bodice awash with a cascade of translucent pearls, rippling like the last rational thought before diving headfirst into love’s abyss. And in a nod to Gustav Klimt, the team embroidered curved netting that framed a model’s face like winged halos, jutting from a long, form-fitting gown that looked like a glamorous obsession, meticulously replicating one of the artist’s sublime gilded paintings.
Amid the extravagant creations, there were a few more realistic specimens: shorter bustier dresses and sculpted, form-fitting numbers that flirted with wearability. But simplicity isn’t Mishra’s love language. He understands that reality is never straightforward, and he doesn’t just embrace complexity, he reveres it. One dress as pale as moonlight on water was embroidered with a shimmering lotus pond. A symbol of devotion and cosmic origins, the lotus isn’t just pretty flora in Mishra’s world; it’s a code steeped in tradition. “Lord Brahma was born in a lotus,” he mused. “And it symbolizes the energy of Lord Krishna—who is nowhere, yet everywhere. It’s said he had 16,000 lovers and wives, and was present with all of them simultaneously. Love goes beyond existence.”
Through his elaborate work, Mishra tries to narrate the intangible, and for that he deserves kudos. Fashion can often feel like an echo chamber of trends, yet he insists on telling stories that engage the spirit as much as the eye. It’s ambitious, poetic, and occasionally a little mad. But then, so is love.