“THERE ARE CHALLENGES EVERY DAY BUT THEY MAKE THE JOURNEY INTERESTING”
IT ALL began with four hand block printers and two tables in Serampore, a small village near Kolkata more than 45 years ago. Ritu Kumar got an order for a few hundred scarf samples, a scale she could not manage on her own. “My husband and I put our heads together to get the order done and after that there was no looking back for us,” says Kumar, one of the most celebrated fashion designers in India.
Known today for its distinctive use of colours, quality of fabrics and intricate embroideries, the Ritu Kumar label has helped create employment in underprivileged areas.
Design diaries
While her first store opened in a friend’s apartment in Defence Colony in 1966, Delhi, she now has 70 stores across the country and four international stores—two in Mauritius and two in Dubai, as well as two manufacturing units—in Kolkata and Gurgaon. “I strongly believe in preserving the legacy of art forms and in heritage. I put in a lot of time in either working at collections or researching them. A typical Ritu Kumar design would be rooted in aesthetics drawn from the vast repertoire of Indian craft and textiles,” she says. Designing begins a year in advance with trend watches that amalgamate international catwalks, fashion blogs, art shows, travel and street style. The mood board is developed after that and designs are experimented with in different colours, fabrics and silhouettes. “Once the samples have been reviewed, approved and finalised, final orders are placed for the next season,” she says.
Breaking barriers
Kumar has never let failures deter her. Not even when her first exhibition at The Park Hotel, Kolkata, in the 60s was a resounding failure. “People were into French chiffons at that point of time and they reviewed my hand block sarees as grandmother’s curtains. But we turned the problem into an opportunity to learn how to combine fabrics and prints,” she says.