Confronted with the fast pace of today’s future-obsessed reality, Indian designer Dhruv Kapoor increasingly seeks respite in stillness.
Back in his home country, a push for modernity is yielding seismic shifts. Take, for one, Amaravati, the planned new capital of the Andhra Pradesh region, currently being built at lightning speed with ambitions to turn it into a “quantum” tech hub.
Kapoor, by contrast, wants to savor the present, embracing the passage of time and the beauty of decay, convinced that what is worn and weathered can give way to something new.
“I wanted to take time to pull back and to see what happens [when you stand still] and how things change [anyway], how nature and time are going to leave a stamp on the body, on the clothes, on memory,” he said.
Pinned to his mood board were idiosyncratic images of construction sites and moss-covered rocks, high-tech cable infrastructures and seashells fading under the sun.
That contrast echoed in the spring collection, where the somewhat graphic cuts of broad-shouldered blazers, crisp culottes, boxy tops and pencil skirts were reconfigured through Kapoor’s signature decorativism — via beadwork dangling like chandeliers from tops and bottoms, prints evoking the organic texture of a cut tree trunk on handkerchief dresses and meaty, pebbled leather for modernist skirt suits.
In keeping with his roots, the sari and lungi, the latter a wraparound garment often crafted from madras checks, were repurposed into engineered skirts, for women and men, covered in beads and crystals, or shirtdresses in patchwork floral patterns.
The same fabric mash-up took center stage in Kapoor’s capsule collection for Puma and the Royal Challengers Bengaluru cricket team, with old-school track jackets crafted from the sportswear giant’s deadstock and limited to 24 pieces per style. They harkened back to the street-savvy aesthetic of Kapoor’s early collections, bringing his latest exploration of time and renewal full circle.
