These South Asian voices are driving a creative revolution in London (and beyond)

From building a global community championing the best of South Asian talent to becoming the first South Asian owned showroom in Mayfair’s Savile Row, here are the movers and shakers of today (and tomorrow) in their own words: unfiltered, nuanced, and never not iconic.

Anita Chhiba - An Unfinished Poem in Progress

On a typical Friday night in London, pubgoers spill into smoking areas with pints in hand, shirts untucked and heels swapped for sneakers. But at the Victoria & Albert Museum in the city’s Kensington borough, on the evening of March 28, an entirely different scene unfolded. Security scrambled to manage the largest footfall since 2017, as the museum’s grand foyer transformed into a euphoric dance floor. Young and old, queer and cis, white and brown bodies moved together to the pulsating beat of Telugu hit O Antava, blasted across the entrance hall as part of an electric sonicscape by DJs Emmanuel Lawal and Ashton Gogol. Elsewhere, in other parts of the carved-alabaster institution, a host of other South Asian artists—spoken word poet Tsunaina, Bharatnatyam dancer Usha Jey, fashion designer Harri, to name a few—came together in a soulful curation, titled Legacy In Motion, that fronted the best of South Asian talent in the city today. At the centre of this electric collision of cultural curation stands Anita Chhiba, the force behind the pioneering Instagram platform Diet Paratha.

“When they asked us to curate the Friday Late, we were hoping to have a footfall of 5,000 people. Turns out, they hadn’t had lines like that since 2017, so it was a pleasant surprise that really reinforced the power and impact of Diet Paratha as not just a South Asian, but a wider cultural community,” says Chhiba with an unmistakable sense of defiant pride. “Although we spotlight South Asian talent and creatives on our platform, we really act as a bridge to a wider culture. We’re consistently telling a developing story, and that’s the beauty of it.”

Born and raised in New Zealand, Chhiba grew up in a country where the South Asian community often carried the weight of inherited expectations. “Anything to do with my culture felt mandatory, but never explained,” she recalls. “I didn’t see people excelling in ways that I found inspiring.” That disconnect became a major catalyst when, in 2017, she decided to begin Diet Paratha to share and appreciate vintage Bollywood posters on Instagram. Propelled by the success of her rapidly growing community, the London-based creative revamped her platform to become a global benchmark for curating and celebrating mainland and diasporic South Asian talent from across the globe.

Moving to London almost a decade ago, Chhiba notes, was pivotal to this journey. Unlike the tokenism she had observed elsewhere, in London Chhiba found a city where diasporic identities were expansive and experimental. “There’s always a question—are we fronting South Asians because they’re South Asian, or because they’re excellent?” Chhiba reflects. Her answer is both instinctive and exacting: She platforms those whose work inspires her, those pushing culture forward in ways that defy reductive framing.

Over the years, the platform has not just frontlined creative talent but also engaged in relevant cultural commentary. This year, we have all watched the sari become a source of major inspiration for global designers, the appearance of the controversial “scarf-dress”, a giant snakes and ladders-inspired runway set for Louis Vuitton’s S/S menswear show, and Prada’s now-infamous Kolhapuri-gate. While many have accepted this infiltration of South Asian aesthetics into global mood boards as a welcome moment of long overdue representation, Chhiba demands the accountability that must come with such representation. “If global legacy brands want cultural authenticity, they need to go to the people already doing the work in these cultural sectors. It’s not enough to have a brown person at the table. You need the right person, with the right credentials, the right lived experience to consult on these projects,” she adds.

This sense of responsibility also spills over into the reflective pause that punctuates her response to my insistence on knowing how she defines icons. “An icon doesn’t need a definition. It’s a presence, a feeling,” she muses. “It can be someone shaping a community, curating a stage, or simply moving people in a profound way.” She hesitates to adopt the label for herself, insisting that the presence of Diet Paratha—fuelled by countless contributors—is the true icon. “If people weren’t doing the work, we wouldn’t have stories to share. It’s a team effort,” she concludes with a smile.

As for the future of Diet Paratha, Chhiba is careful not to over-engineer its trajectory. “Culture needs space to evolve naturally,” she says. “You can’t force it.” While exciting projects and directions lie in store for one and all in the coming months, at its core, Diet Paratha remains a living chronicle of South Asian creativity, untethered to monolithic narratives. For Chhiba, it is a reminder that a community of over 1.5 billion people cannot, and should not, be contained by a single aesthetic. “There is so much room for nuance, so many stories yet to be told,” she says.

RAV & PARV MATHARU - Building a Legacy

Meet the Matharus: Business partners, husband and wife, parents, and the first South Asian couple to own and operate a brand in London’s venerated menswear street, Savile Row. Also, the force behind the first brand in the tailoring district, which offers its clients bespoke luxury streetwear, simply because luxury joggers can be made with the same care and appreciation for craft and technique as a crisply tailored suit.

When I sit down with Parv and Rav—days after the couple has returned from Paris, where they showcased their work as part of the British Fashion Council’s London Show Rooms during the ongoing Men’s Fashion Week—in their artfully curated Mayfair showroom, I am astounded by the seeming ease with which they appear to navigate the flamenco-like beats of their evervaried and ever-busy lives. The duo is currently in the midst of preparing for a series of trunk shows with luxury retailer The Webster across New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, an intentional move to expand their global footprint. “For us, it’s not about scaling wholesale,” explains Rav, the founder and creative director of the brand. “It’s about curating bespoke experiences for clients in different territories. Whether it’s in the US or the Middle East, we want to meet people where they are and co-create with them. It should be about experience, about creating something that is truly yours.”

As a former football player for Leeds United till the age of 21, Rav has a long association with streetwear and sneaker culture. But unlike most brands that are born on runway backstages or studio floors, Clothsurgeon began germinating into reality way back in 2009 when Rav was struck by a chance remark from a tutor in the Leeds College of Art and Design, likening his precise cutting technique to that of a surgeon. Eventually, Rav began Clothsurgeon as a blog: A digital mood board of his obsession with craft and well-made things, before eventually starting out the brand in 2012 from his flat in Dalston.

Enter Parv. A former corporate real estate professional and McKinsey consultant, she brought with her a discipline of strategy, finance, and operations that have been instrumental in Clothsurgeon becoming the international name that it is today. “Those years taught me the importance of networks, negotiation, and structure,” she recalls. “All of which have been transferable to fashion.” Rav agrees candidly: “Without Parv, there would be no store on Savile Row.” Thirteen years into their marriage, the Matharus have learned to respect each other’s lanes while driving toward a shared vision.

For Rav, that means pushing creativity and craft to higher levels, and for Parv, it means anchoring that vision in sustainability and business acumen. It is a philosophy that has enabled Clothsurgeon to evolve organically, cultivating loyal clients while retaining its creative integrity. “Without creativity, there is no product. But without commerce, there is no business,” she says. “You can design the most beautiful collection, but if it doesn’t reach customers, it can’t live.” Rav acknowledges the tension inherent in building an independent brand. “As a self-funded business, every choice carries weight; we’re constantly balancing innovation with sustainability.” Looking ahead, his ambition is to scale with intention, focusing on long-term client relationships and developing complementary projects that preserve the brand’s exclusivity.

Despite these expansion plans, family non-negotiably remains at the heart of their universe. Raising two young daughters—Mia and Saachi—while building a global label has demanded adaptation and resilience. “When your name is on the door, you carry it with you everywhere. But our children are growing up alongside the brand. They see it being built before their eyes, and that exposure is priceless,” says Parv.

When I ask him about the icons he grew up revering, Rav presents me with a list that is as long as it is wide, ranging from Bruce Lee and Amitabh Bachchan to football legends like Paul Gascoigne and Del Piero. Later, style figures such as Stefano Pilati and cultural trailblazers like Pharrell Williams shaped his vision of eclectic individuality. Parv, on the other hand, recalls the universality of Michael Jackson and the elegance of Princess Diana, whose influence touched generations, including their own family. I quickly conjure a mental image of the late princess walking in some of the brand’s bespoke creations and smile. Today, the Matharu’s understanding of icons has deepened. To them, greatness lies in dedication to one’s craft, whether tailoring a perfect jacket or commanding a tennis court. This ethos defines clothsurgeon: A brand rooted in patience, perseverance, and the pursuit of excellence. “It’s about building something that lasts,” says Rav, likening their decade-long journey to laying foundations strong enough to support a legacy.

AMBA SAYAL-BENNETT - Beauty on the Go

In the world of contemporary art, Amba Sayal-Bennett stands perched on the threshold of multiplicity. Half-Indian, with Punjabi roots on her mother’s side, and half Italian-Welsh on her father’s, the London-based multimedia artist embodies a sensibility that is as hybrid and unclassifiable as her background. “I’ve always had this feeling of being both and neither,” she reflects, describing her upbringing in north-west London, between Harrow and Wembley, amidst a vibrant South Asian community, as we sit in a corner of her studio in Collective Ending, an artist-run initiative in South London’s Deptford. “It’s not just South Asian diaspora, but something even more layered, more hybrid. That sense of in-betweenness has always shaped how I see.”

Her curiously dense, quietly moving 3D printed sculptures are drawn upon the unseen movements of history: Partition memories carried by her grandmother, the shifting geometries of architecture, and the abstractions of the human body. “I approach histories that affect me but that I haven’t directly lived,” she explains. “Researching them, tracing movements, whether of people, plants, or forms, becomes a way of making sense of my own.”

Art has always been her chosen language, and as a child, she would spend hours copying images from books—her earliest act of devotion to the discipline. “Drawing was my entry point,” she recalls. “I never had to question what else I would do. It was simply what I wanted to be doing.” This instinctive pull towards image-making evolved through academic inquiry. Her undergraduate years exposed her to architectural theory; a master’s degree in art history honed her critical vocabulary; a practice-led PhD at Goldsmiths allowed her to navigate between theory and making. “I’ve always needed to be doing multiple things at once—teaching, reading, making. That split energy is generative for me.”

Her sculptural turn came later, in 2018, when she pursued a master’s in sculpture at the Royal College of Art. There, she discovered the “forgiving” malleability of metal. “It clicked,” she says of her first encounter with the workshop. “Metal has a strong relationship to paper, and it can be slotted together like a card maquette. It relates to drawing, but in three dimensions. And unlike wood, which demands perfection, metal allows for mistakes and lets you weld, sand, reshape it.” There is a tender affection in Sayal-Bennett’s voice when she makes this remark that stands in a definite contrast to the resistant ideas that most of her artworks are grounded in.

Sayal-Bennett’s practice today is characterised by a recursive dialogue between drawing, sculpture, and architecture. Her works inhabit that liminal space where the body meets the built environment, where diagrams intended to clarify instead reveal their exclusions. Architecture, in particular, has been a recurring locus of her research. A 2022 residency at the British School in Rome allowed her to interrogate the ambivalent legacies of modernism — from Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh to Mussolini’s Rome. “Modernist architecture has always carried this paradox,” she observes. “It projects a vision of the future, but it can also be appropriated for deeply problematic purposes, whether in fascist Italy or postcolonial India. I became interested in how ornament, which modernism tried to repress, might act as an irritant, a threat to the stability of those clean geometries.”

This interest in how bodies and buildings are cut open, reduced to fragments, or cleansed of their visceral realities runs deep in the artist’s work. During her undergraduate studies, she drew weekly from cadavers in the medical school, a practice that left a lasting impression. “Those drawings were messy, indiscernible. Yet medical diagrams, like architectural sections, present themselves as clean, rational, neutral. They erase the violence of cutting, the mess of reality. I’m interested in that tension.”

Despite the conceptual density of her work, Sayal-Bennett’s practice is firmly rooted in the rhythms of daily making. A typical day might involve sketching at her laptop, working through digital drawings, or immersing herself in archives—most recently, the medical manuscripts of the Wellcome Collection. “My practice is very screen-based, quite nomadic,” she says. “But toward the end of a project, I’ll spend long days in the studio, bringing those ideas into material form.” A cup of home-made coffee in hand, she walks to work every day, with music and sound for company. I insist on a rundown of her Spotify shuffle, and after much persistence, she relents. What comes forth is a heady mix of podcasts on architecture and art theory, electronic music, and radio. “I can’t focus on just one thing because of my dyslexia; I need to be partially elsewhere. That distraction helps the work breathe.”

There is a lyrical tension in Sayal-Bennett’s art. To encounter her drawings and sculptures is to enter a space where histories, bodies, and architectures are dissected and reassembled into possibilities. “I think I’m still figuring it out,” she admits with candour. “But maybe that’s the point. It’s about inhabiting the instability of forms, of histories, of identities—and allowing them to generate new ways of seeing.”

RAHI CHADDA - The Cult of the Beauteous Self

It is 9:00 am, and Rahi Chadda is just getting started. A beautiful ceramic cup in hand, the 32-year-old London-based model, entrepreneur and influencer lays out his plans for the day—a succession of meetings, ideations and planning sessions—all the while exuding a quietness of spirit that strangely belies the demanding pace of his professional life. Dressed in a neon green (or brat green, for the faithful and initiated) t-shirt, I find Chadda in a rare moment of quietude—far removed from the globe-trotting Instagram self one usually associates with him.

“My love affair with fashion started when I was 12,” Chadda recalls. “Back then, I couldn’t articulate what it meant to feel empowered, but I understood instinctively that when I wore something I loved, it changed how I felt.” In his all-boys London school, where the sartorial language skewed towards prep (think tennis jumpers, chinos, colourful shirts tucked under leather belts), Chadda found his early vocabulary of style on the one day of the month when the students had the liberty to show up to school in an outfit of their choice. “I was never the loudest in the classroom, but I expressed myself loudly through clothes. It was my way of showing up.”

Over the past decade, Chadda has carved a niche not merely as a content creator but as a cultural interlocutor, unfolding narratives through fashion, beauty, and digital presence with the quiet poise of someone who knows precisely who he is. Collaborations with luxury houses like Gucci, Louis Vuitton and Chopard notwithstanding, in 2022, Chadda was named in Forbes 30 Under 30, an acclaim that solidified his influence beyond the quotidian walls of fashion. Over the years, his approach to fashion has evolved from statement jackets and flamboyant silhouettes to a quieter, more nuanced aesthetic. “With time, I’ve realised you don’t always need to be the loudest in the room. There’s grace in subtlety. And sometimes, power, too.”

But to understand Chadda is to understand a story that is both personal and generational. He began his academic journey in law, eventually realising that his heart resided elsewhere. “When I moved out for university, it gave me the distance to examine my life away from conditioning,” he says. “And in that solitude, I discovered that creativity, fashion, and storytelling were my true calling.” For nearly a decade, Chadda straddled dual careers. By day, he ran a skin clinic in east London: A venture he built from scratch at age 21. And by night (and flight), he nurtured a parallel life as a digital tastemaker. “For seven-and-a-half years,” he explains, “I did both. But eventually I had to admit that my passion lay elsewhere.”

The leap into full-time content creation came at 27, not with viral immediacy, but with the gentle crescendo of consistency. “My journey hasn’t had a single viral moment. It’s been organic.” And yet, even as his social media following swelled and collaborations with legacy fashion houses multiplied, Chadda’s sense of self remained uncannily grounded. “I love being called an influencer, because I am deeply proud of who I am. Social media gave many of us community, credibility, and careers. The word doesn’t offend me because it defines a new generation of cultural relevance.” Yet, representation for Chadda was never a marketing device. “I’ve never used being South Asian as marketing currency. If you book me, book me for my vision, not for a diversity checkbox. I want people to see Rahi first,” states plainly the man who in 2022 became one of the first brown male ambassadors for Dior Beauty.

This clarity of identity extends beyond fashion into his belief system. Spirituality, he says, is the scaffolding on which he builds his days. “My mornings and nights begin with affirmations. I chant throughout the day, even on planes, with my headphones in. It grounds me.” Offline, his world is calm, minimal, almost monastic. “Social media is my work, but real life is full of imperfection. I often say, I sell glamour, but behind the scenes I’m a labourer.” There’s a candour in this reflection that never veers into performance, I mentally note. It becomes most apparent when he speaks of his own beauty, openly recalling an acne flare-up just before walking for a Shantnu Nikhil runway show. “I didn’t wear make-up. They let me walk as I was,” he remembers. “That kind of acceptance meant everything.”

Beauty, for Chadda, is both ritual and remembrance. “My mother taught me to love myself,” he says, almost reverently. His earliest wellness routines were homegrown—face masks made of regular household products on tired faces. Today, although his self-care includes lymphatic massages, ice baths, and IV drips, its purpose remains the same: “These are my coping mechanisms. We all need something that allows us to show up for life.”

When asked what the word icon means to him, his answer is telling: “It’s not about fame. It’s about authenticity. Being so self-aware, so rooted in your truth, that you can show up as yourself in every room you enter. That’s iconic.” And show up, he does. In an ever-shifting landscape where aesthetics are increasingly sidelined for relatability, Chadda has chosen to declutter and recalibrate. “Four years ago, beautifully curated imagery was enough. Now, it’s personality that builds a connection. That’s been my biggest challenge, bringing more of myself into the content while still staying true to my essence.” It is a life that is barely devoid of complexity, but truly committed to clarity. And that is just the quality that makes for the best kind of poetry.

This article first appeared in the August-September 2025 issue of Harper's Bazaar India

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