Q. Tell us a bit about your early years?
A. I lived in Mumbai and was into catering. Then, I took up hotel management and went to the Middle East to work in that line. Finally, I saved enough money to get into fashion; which I was always interested in. But I had no idea about how to cut a garment and other technicalities. So, to educate myself I went to Los Angeles for a degree. I followed that with higher studies in Paris and returned to India in 1988.

Pic/Atul Kamble

Q. Was it tough to break in at that time?
A. I had difficulty with the kind of fashion I wanted to create. There was already this maharaja fashion doing the rounds, and Hollywood-hippie kitsch but there wasn’t the minimalist kind of fashion that took the abstractness, of say, Yoga or the temples of south India. So, I translated that and we made it into a philosophy that ended up being minimalist. Then we introduced concepts like eco-friendly clothes, way back in 1991. Though the initial part was difficult because I was creating garments that were different; once people understood the vision, the rest was easy.