How DJs shape fashion from behind the decks

At most fashion weeks and brand launches, the show starts before the runway does. Guests are still slipping into their seats, waving across rows, checking who else is in the room, and music is already playing in the background. You hear it as you walk in, before you have taken in a single silhouette. That sound becomes part of how the space registers, long before the clothes do.

Fashion has always moved alongside music, though it feels more visible now. Michel Gaubert has built the sound for multiple major houses during Paris Fashion Week, creating entire sonic identities around their collections. At Milan Fashion Week, Victoria De Angelis of Maneskin stepped behind the decks for Dolce & Gabbana’s 2025 show, drawing attention to the sound in the room as much as the clothes on the runway. These moments make the relationship obvious, yet most of the people behind the music remain far less visible.

Spending time around shows, previews, and launches, you begin to notice how often music carries the emotional current of an event. You may forget the exact track that played, though you remember how the room felt, how conversations took over, or how long you stayed. That atmosphere rarely happens by chance.

For DJs working with Indian fashion labels, this part takes hours of planning. They sit with teams to talk through pace and emotion, test different tracks, rearrange sets, and rethink transitions. From the outside, it can look like someone pressing play. From inside the process, it feels closer to design. This is where my own perspective shifted, too, from seeing music as an add-on to understanding it as part of how a collection lands in a room. That work often sits in the background of coverage. Designers, stylists, and set teams are credited in press notes and interviews, while the people responsible for how a room sounds tend to fade into the larger production. Yet room after room, sound carries a large part of the emotional weight, even when guests cannot clearly explain why a show felt a certain way. As fashion continues leaning into experiences built around feeling and atmosphere, the role of sound becomes harder to separate from the rest of the creative process.

Working within the brief

Spending time around fashion events also shows how much a DJ’s role shifts depending on the setting. The job goes far beyond picking tracks. It involves interpretation, technical awareness, and a constant reading of how people are moving and interacting. Watching this up close makes it clear that the work is reactive as much as it is planned.

Adi Chaudhri, also known as Another Adi, is a DJ based out of Mumbai who often plays at brand pop-ups and fashion after-parties. He describes a process that is far more structured than it appears from the outside. He is usually brought in about two weeks before an event, with references and example audio shared early in the process. “I like playing these events because of how tight the brief is,” he says. “I am told specifically what will work, what will not work, and how long I am to play. They trust that if they give me 5-10 minutes of example audio, I will be able to stretch the rest to 3-4 (or whatever) hours I am playing.”

Hearing that makes the level of trust involved much clearer. A short reference has to grow into hours of music that still feels cohesive in the room. Chaudhri explains that story and mood often work together during this stage. A colourful sundowner might call for funk that mirrors the playfulness of a collection, while a marquee store event can lean toward minimal house with soft piano motifs and clean textures. A jewellery showcase inside a dim warehouse once led him toward darker, hypnotic sounds that heightened the intensity of the space. “We are still an afterthought,” he says, “but at the moment of delivery, we are like the atmosphere or glue necessary to tie the whole experience together.” That description of music as glue comes up often in conversations with DJs, and it captures a role that holds everything together without demanding attention.

He is also realistic about what people carry with them afterwards. “The collection is remembered for visuals, for freebies, for people one meets - the sound works in the background, influencing people more subliminally than directly.”

Sound as storytelling

DJ Shrikesh Choksi speaks about sound as something that reaches people quickly, sometimes before they have fully processed what they are looking at. When building a soundtrack, his first step is understanding how firmly a designer holds their vision.

“Some designers have prescriptive vision; others just know the feeling they want to leave people with. Once I know that, I know if I’m interpreting versus executing,” he notes.

That distinction between interpreting and executing points to how creative this role can be. “It can completely shift how the clothes are perceived and help build whatever narrative the designer is hoping to tell,” he explains. “If the collection is inspired by a certain place or time period, sound is the easiest way to build context.”

Listening to him, it becomes easier to see sound as part of storytelling rather than a simple background. He also challenges the idea that music lacks importance in fashion spaces. “Have you ever been to a show without music? People know that it’s essential,” he says. “That being said, it’s rarely remembered unless there’s context or conversation around it.”

Reading the room

Nida Merchant, another DJ who has worked on a whole bunch of fashion launches, approaches these events by focusing on how a brand wants people to feel within a space rather than beginning with a genre. “For me, reading the feeling is about understanding how the brand wants people to exist in the space, how relaxed, curious, or energised they should feel, rather than treating the music as a purely aesthetic layer,” she says.

Her examples show how much the setting shapes the sound. “A Ritu Kumar event at a bar in Delhi called for upbeat, groovy sounds that encouraged people to socialise and loosen up, whereas a domestic swimwear launch by a hotel pool needed something far more laid-back and tropical,” she explains.
Even with that level of thought, visibility remains limited. “To be honest, I do think DJs are often invisible in fashion spaces; sometimes we’re not even mentioned on the invite,” Merchant says. Still, she is comfortable with a supporting role. “This isn’t a club night where I’m leading the experience. I’m responding to a world the brand has already carefully constructed.”

When the moment passes

For Simran Rajani, who performs as DJ Sim Sim, the starting point is always the brand’s internal world. “My initial thought is always to dive into and gauge the vision, personality, and overall sense of the brand and its collection,” she says. That foundation shapes everything that follows, from genre choices to how much lyrical content makes sense in the space. For her, sound has to sit in harmony with the larger creative team, alongside clothes, lighting, and staging.

Her preparation often spans weeks, with constant back-and-forth and careful sound selection. She pays close attention to texture and restraint, ensuring the music supports the visual experience without pulling focus from it. That also means being ready to adapt in the moment, depending on how the sound carries across a venue and how people respond.

Recalling a Diesel showcase, she describes moving from bass-heavy electronic sounds into hip-hop, R&B, and old-school garage mid-set, which changed how people interacted in the space. The shift made the room feel more open and participatory, helping audiences connect with the clothes in a more relaxed, personal way. “Having fun with it and not overanalysing every little detail definitely helps my work,” she says.

She also points out that music can sometimes highlight sides of a collection that even designers have not fully articulated yet, simply by bringing a different emotional texture into the room. At the same time, she remains aware that sound exists in time, tied to the duration of an event rather than a physical object. “Art is how we decorate space. Music is how we decorate time,” she says.

Credit, authorship, and what it would change

For many DJs, proper credit is less about visibility and more about accountability and credibility. Shrikesh Choksi believes authorship would push sound beyond support and into intention. “When authorship is clear, people start asking why certain choices were made, not just whether they worked,” he says. That kind of shift would place sound in the same creative conversation as clothes, casting, or set design, where decisions are discussed rather than simply absorbed.

Adi Chaudhri also sees credit as something that would change how DJs are positioned within the process itself. Being named, he suggests, would move them from service providers to collaborators, giving their choices cultural weight rather than letting them dissolve into the overall atmosphere at the end of the night. It would also make clearer how much interpretation and responsibility sit in the role, especially in spaces where music guides how people feel, move, and respond.

Lead Image: Adi Chaudhri, Simran Rajani

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