Jatin Manodra
Long before "throwback" became a marketing strategy, Double Bull was the brand doing the actual show-stopping. Flip through any Indian fashion magazine from the late 80s and 90s, and there's a good chance a Double Bull ad is staring back at you - bold prints, sharper collars, and a Bollywood leading man selling the whole look with one raised eyebrow.
When Double Bull Was THE Shirt Brand
In 1989, Double Bull's "Sizzling Style" campaign put none other than Salman Khan - fresh off his star-making turn that same year - in the brand's Summer Collection, styled in everything from an open-collared electric blue shirt to a subtle grey batik print. The tagline promised shirts "styled as precisely as only Double Bull can," and for a generation of Indian men, that promise stuck.
It wasn't a one-hero moment either. Double Bull's "Wagon" line, sold out of its Linking Road and Colaba outposts, put Chunky Pandey in its signature Nehru-collar shirts, while its "goodtime shirts" range fronted by Jackie Shroff leaned into the era's love for bold stripes and statement colour-blocking. Across campaigns, the common thread was the same: fearless, look-at-me fashion that defined how Bollywood's leading men dressed both on screen and off it. That's not incidental nostalgia; it's the brand's actual origin story as a style-maker, not just a shirt-maker.
Why That Matters Now
Fashion has a well-documented habit of coming back around, and Indian menswear is currently in the middle of its own retro moment - bold prints, relaxed silhouettes, and colour choices that would have felt at home in a 90s song sequence are back on shelves and on Instagram feeds. For most new-age brands chasing this trend, it's an aesthetic borrowed from somewhere else. For Double Bull, it's simply picking up a thread it never really let go of.
That's the real story behind the brand's re-launch: this isn't a heritage label cosplaying nostalgia to sell shirts. It's the brand that was actually there the first time, showing up again just as the trend it helped define comes back into fashion.
More Than a Marketing Moment
There's a reason "your favourite brand is back" lands harder for Double Bull than it would for most labels. People don't just remember old ads - they remember what those ads represented: the shirt their father wore to a wedding, the print that made a college photo instantly dateable, the specific shade of maroon that a magazine once called "not quite maroon, not quite brick-red, but very definitely striking."
That kind of memory is nearly impossible to manufacture. Newer brands can borrow the aesthetic of the era; only Double Bull can point to the actual campaigns, the actual stars, and the actual shelves it once owned - and call it evidence, not inspiration.
Jatin Manodra, CEO of Double Bull, is now steering the brand that once dressed Bollywood's biggest names into its next chapter - carrying the same confidence forward, just with a modern wardrobe.
The Comeback, On Its Own Terms
Double Bull's re-entry into today's market isn't about recreating 1989. It's about carrying that same instinct - bold, confident, unmistakably Indian menswear - into a wardrobe built for 2026. The prints are updated, the fits are more contemporary, and the retail footprint looks nothing like the single Bandra outlet it once operated from. But the core idea hasn't changed: dress like you mean it.
For a market currently rediscovering everything the 90s got right about colour and confidence, that's not a bad place to be standing.
