Fabric meets freedom: Tarun Tahiliani on completing 30 years in fashion

As label Tarun Tahiliani marks 30 years, he tells Akshara Srivastava about his enduring fascination with movement, fluidity and the quiet power of fabric in motion

It is a lunch that does not quite end with the meal. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, something of a rarity in smog-engulfed New Delhi these days, I arrive at Qla, the charming European restaurant tucked among designer studios in Mehrauli. This is the city’s well-worn fashion high street, a curious mix of couture ateliers and heritage stonework, with the Qutub Minar looming in the background like a silent witness to reinvention.

 

The central courtyard has already been claimed by early arrivals, and so I settle into a quieter corner indoors to wait for Tarun Tahiliani. Over the last three decades, the fashion designer has come to be known as the “master of drapes”, a title earned through an unwavering commitment to fluidity, structure, and an unmistakably Indian way of dressing the body.

 

Tahiliani is currently gearing up to celebrate a significant milestone: 30 years of his eponymous label. The anniversary will be marked with a show at the British Residency in Hyderabad, a setting that mirrors his own sensibility: Historical, layered, and quietly grand. So when our lunch ends not with dessert but with an invitation to his studio in Gurugram, to observe fittings in progress, I cannot refuse. But more on that later.

 

“I’m very excited about it,” he says as we settle in. “In the context of designers abroad, and even our own history, this is still a very new industry. Thirty years is a big milestone. And I think when you reach moments like this, it’s important to push yourself to stretch the limits.”

 

Before conversation takes over, we decide to place the entire food order in one go. We begin with Darjeeling-style chicken dumplings, followed by a morel and white asparagus soup for him, and a porcini mushroom pasta for me. Tahiliani also orders a pink gin with tonic water, cucumber, and ice.

 

“Large or small?” the server asks.

 

“Look at my size!” he quips, gesturing at himself. I laugh, instantly disarmed. Delhi’s pollution has been unforgiving on my throat, so I stick to warm water.

 

It is over this easy banter that Tahiliani begins to trace his unlikely journey into fashion, one that began not in a design studio, but in the United States, where he was studying before life intervened rather abruptly.

 

“My father was becoming chief of naval staff,” he says, “and I had to dash back in three days because Indira Gandhi’s secretary, PC Alexander, called to say that he couldn’t be the trustee of a private company set up by my grandfather.”

 

Tahiliani returned to India, took charge of the business, and found himself selling oil-field equipment and machine tools — “neither of which I had the aptitude for”.

 

“So the godown slowly converted into India’s first luxury multi-brand store,” he says with a smile.

 

That store was Ensemble, launched in 1987 with his wife Sal (Sailaja). The idea was deceptively simple but revolutionary for its time.

 

“Sal met (designer) Rohit Khosla during a modelling assignment and asked him why he wasn’t selling his clothes,” Tahiliani recalls. “He said there were no stores.”

 

Ensemble soon became the launchpad for Indian designer fashion, and nearly a decade later, Label Tarun Tahiliani followed. Thirty years on, Tahiliani has not only survived the churn of fashion cycles but continues to reinvent himself, most recently through a decisive push into prêt-à-porter with OTT, and the launch of Tasva, a men’s wedding and occasion-wear brand created in collaboration with the Aditya Birla Group.

 

OTT, which embodies his signature “India Modern” aesthetic, is perhaps the clearest articulation of Tahiliani’s long-standing belief that Indian design can be both rooted and globally relevant — an East meets West vocabulary.

 

“It’s my mission to create a great Indian modern brand that the world can wear with pride,” he says. “And by early indicators, I think we’re on our way.”

 

Our conversation pauses as the food arrives. The risotto is creamy, gently perfumed with truffle. The chicken dumplings come swimming in a tangy, spicy curry. We dig in with enthusiasm, polishing them off quickly before resuming.

 

“I’ve always loved sportswear,” Tahiliani says, clarifying that in fashion school, everyday clothing is categorised as sportswear, while activewear refers to clothes worn specifically for athletic activity.

 

“Bridal is beautiful,” he continues, “but what we wear day-to-day needs to have good, contemporary cuts. Young people today have grown up on Zara. So why don’t we have cool things that are Indian, but also feel current?”

 

Even in his prêt line, the drape is unmistakable. OTT features structured drapes, tailored gilets, dhoti pants — modern, wearable silhouettes that remain distinctly Indian.

 

How did the drape become so central to his design language?

 

“I’ve always loved the fluidity of fabric,” he says. “My mother, grandmother, aunts, all wore saris. I once worked with a woman in Jodhpur who stood in a block-printing unit all day in a chiffon sari and never messed it up.”

 

He recounts travelling through Kutch for three days, visiting weavers and Ajrakh printers. Everywhere he looked, fabric billowed, folded, wrapped.

 

“The more I looked around, the more I realised this is the basis of how Indians dress,” he says. “We may source fabric from anywhere, but the dhoti, the turban, the sari, the shawl — they’re all draped. Structured clothing cannot recreate that. And I realised I loved the drape.”

 

When he returned to fashion school, Tahiliani spent most of his time in draping classes. One of his defining moments came when Minal Modi, his eternal muse, approached him when Tanya Godrej (now executive director and chief brand officer at the Godrej Group) was getting married.

 

“She said, ‘I hear you drape, and I want to look like I’m wrapped in a turban.’”

 

A chic woman, he says, can take mul mul or chiffon and look like she’s wearing French couture if she knows how to drape it well. “But we’ve forgotten it.”

 

His morel and asparagus soup arrives, steam rising thickly from the bowl. For a full minute, there is silence as we eat. Then I ask him about the genesis of his collaboration with Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd.

 

Kumar Mangalam Birla, one of Ensemble’s earliest customers, Tahiliani recalls, had called him around the time of the Ambani twins’ weddings. “They had done a deal and  I asked if the group was still interested in working with designers,” Tahiliani says, realising he needed a partner. 

 

All successful global brands, he says, have a yin and yang: One creative partner and one business mind. He liked the culture at Madura Fashions, and after exploring multiple possibilities, menswear stood out. “That’s how Tasva was born.”

 

We glance at our watches. An hour has passed. We skip dessert and ask for the bill. Tahiliani insists on paying; I insist on refusing. He concedes, and instead, invites me to his studio.

 

“We learned from Rohit Khosla, who taught us with a khulla dil (open heart),” he says. “If you’re interested to learn, I’m always interested to teach.”

 

Three days later, I find myself at his Gurugram studio. Glass doors with handles spelling out “TT” open into a long workspace. Three mannequins dressed in Tahiliani’s creations stand behind a large desk, and beyond them, a long row of sewists hum quietly at work.

 

In a fitting room nearby, his team helps a well-toned model into garments. I’ve arrived early, but late to the action. Tahiliani sits at a stone-topped table scattered with coloured pencils, sketches, and reference photographs.

 

“It’s fun to do something for yourself, something not on the calendar,” he says. “I’m pushing my limits — in tailoring, in draping. The clothes have no embellishment. I’m also a little nervous.”

 

For the next three hours, I watch him rise from his chair every time the model emerges. Fringes are trimmed, chains repositioned, thick belts swapped for thinner ones. Drapes are refined, shoes and accessories hunted down in the right accents of gold and silver. Motifs are removed with ruthless clarity.

 

At one point, he pulls out his phone to show me an Instagram video of Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel sets — a supermarket, a beach, an airport. “Iconic for a reason,” he says simply.

 

Why, I ask, do Indian fashion brands still struggle to occupy space on the global stage?

 

“They started in the ’40s,” he says of European houses. “And they made western clothes the world already wore. We’re a different culture.”

 

He recounts watching a film about a Sicilian photographer in the 1950s. “I said to Sal, ‘They all look like they’re wearing the current Prada collection.’ Nothing has really changed. It just so happens that the world, including us Indians, wears that.”

 

OTT, he believes, has the potential to transcend borders precisely because it refuses to abandon its origins.

 

As fittings continue, I wander into the studio library. Books on Indian saris, regional drapes, bags, and textiles line the shelves, many marked with Post-it notes. I leaf through one on the drapes of India, learning how each state wraps fabric differently.

 

When I return to the fitting room, I find Tahiliani holding up a pallu, adjusting its fall with the instinct of someone who has done this for decades.

 

As I leave, he asks if I liked the library. “You’re welcome to use it anytime,” he says.

 

I know I will.