How South Asian creatives are taking the global stage

South Asian creatives today are no longer confined to the margins or reduced to tokenism. At Bazaar Dialogue’s inaugural edition in June in collaboration with The Bicester Collection, they assert a singular vision rooted in heritage, but articulated through a sharp contemporary lens. The author speaks to the six panellists who have stepped beyond geographic and conceptual borders to define what it means to create from and for the South Asian mainland diaspora.

Dhruv Kapoor: For the first time

Dhruv Kapoor’s earliest memories of fashion are rooted in everyday poetry: The quiet dignity of the “Sunday best” worn by people at home. There were no rules, only the beauty of instinctual self expression. “It was incredible to witness how a simple combination could tell a story about the wearer,” he reflects. That fascination has now evolved into a lifelong search for how clothes hold memory, duality, and meaning—all at once.

As a student at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, he was enamoured with Manish Arora’s electric flamboyance and Rohit Bal’s sculptural tailoring. But it was his engagement with Marc Jacobs’ era at Louis Vuitton and Nicolas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga that ignited a new awareness of restraint, asymmetry, and the unexpected. His time studying womenswear in Milan further sharpened that vision, exposing him to a culture where fashion was essentially a way of life. “Over time, I began to understand my aesthetic,” he explains, “Fusing the expressive India I was raised in with the precision of Italy’s tailoring.”

This sensibility formed the scaffolding of his brand. His collections are marked by a singular voice. At a time when Indian designers and homegrown labels continued pushing the boundaries of wedding couture, Kapoor—with this brand iconography in the instantly recognisable Devnagari script— brought the hitherto unexplored category of streetwear. “One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learnt is that nothing is permanent. Everything is in motion,” he notes.

His FW25/26 collection recently showcased in Milan with the label’s signature oversized androgynous silhouettes, jasmine-like embroidery, and excessive prints, which he describes as ‘the purest reflection’ of the label to date, is evidence of this evolution: A vision rooted in craft, yet forward-facing, minimal yet intricate.

Kapoor’s early stint in publishing—a detour through the editorial lens—offered invaluable insight. “It was powerful to witness how designers communicate not through words, but purely through clothing,” he shares. It is perhaps this clarity of thought that underpins his ability to visualise collections that are emotionally intelligent, self-aware, and startlingly original.

His return to India, after his postgraduation and a brief stint at Etro, became a defining moment. “By July, I had started mentally shaping the vision of what I wanted to build,” recalls the 36-year-old designer. That clarity materialised into a brand that is unafraid to hold space for contradiction: Masculine and fluid, ornate and minimal, Indian and global. Today, as we speak, Kapoor is already preparing to make his womenswear debut in Milan, later this year in September—a move that was long coming, and yet never better timed.

To emerging designers, Kapoor offers unsentimental, steady advice: “Ignore the turbulence. Stand your ground. Be true to who you are and never chase validation.” When asked about dream collaborations, he names Miuccia Prada without hesitation. “She provokes through design and makes you pause and think.” It’s an answer that, like Kapoor’s own work, eschews spectacle in favour of substance.

Shalini Mishra: Homes of joy

Raised in the coal-rich town of Dhanbad—then in Bihar, now Jharkhand—interior designer, e-commerce entrepreneur and philanthropist Shalini Mishra grew up in a world where homes bore witness to culture, identity, and pride. With no restaurants to escape to, social life revolved around domestic spaces. “People invested heavily in their homes and the décor varied from one house to another, reflecting both aesthetic sensibility and personal pride,” she recalls as we connect over Zoom, from her London home. From my screen I find Mishra seated in a softly lit interior brimming to the hilt with an eclectic mix of art installations. But despite the museum-like quality of her own London house, Mishra’s upbringing was shaped by a humble, modernist 1960s-style home, and the rituals of Durga Puja pandal-making—sparking an early tactile and emotional fascination with the transformation of space.

This fascination soon blossomed into a global design language grounded in Indian traditions. After completing her architecture degree in Delhi, Mishra pursued urban planning in New York City at Columbia University and later studied virtual environments at Bartlett, University College London—decades ahead of the digital pivot that would eventually redefine modern workspaces. Her thesis envisioned a virtual office long before the idea gained traction. “At the time, it was conceptual,” she says. “Now, it’s a reality.”

Mishra’s first interior commission, a Kensington apartment, was a masterclass in design improvisation. Drawing on her architectural instincts and an intuitive sense of materiality, she assembled a network of craftspeople and contractors, most of whom she still works with today. “That project was my design education in real time,” she reflects. “I learned how to bring together high craft, historical references, and personal storytelling into one space.”

Over the last two decades, Mishra has become a quiet force behind some of the most artfully layered homes across the Square Mile, the Big Apple, Como, and New Delhi. Whether she’s designing a stained-glass-lined hallway in Kensington or a thermally optimised courtyard in Delhi, each space she creates tells a story steeped in both memory and innovation. Her New Delhi home, for example, exemplifies a deeply Indian sensibility—constructed using local bricks, sun-responsive planning, and age-old architectural principles like the pancha bhuta principles, and vastu shastra. “We didn’t need air conditioning,” she says with a laugh, while showing me images of one of her living rooms. “The house breathes with the seasons, because that is how it is constructed, to ensure the steady flow of light and air.”

Central to Mishra’s practice is her commitment to South Asian design narratives. Her latest initiative, Shakti, is a design residency and think tank spotlighting Indian artisanship through a contemporary lens. “We’re working with five ateliers, pushing them to think generationally,” she explains. “Design must be excellent, culturally rooted, and made to endure.” Shakti builds on Mishra’s earlier project, Curio, an e-commerce platform dedicated to handmade design, and responds to a visible absence of Indian representation at global design fairs. “At Art Basel Miami two years ago,” Mishra tells me, “there wasn’t a single Indian gallery. That has to change.” For Mishra, the global embrace of Indian aesthetics isn’t about tokenism, but about equity and cultural fluency. Her work champions India not just as an aesthetic source, but as a conceptual and technical powerhouse. “There’s a love story with India,” she says. “But it’s time for the world to see it not only as inspiration but as innovation.”

From hand-painted mirrored ceilings in London to bronze rugs by contemporary Indian artists, Mishra’s practice is as multifaceted as the culture she celebrates. With Shakti poised to become a global platform for dialogue and design, Mishra’s not just designing homes, she’s designing the future of Indian craft on the world stage.

Nikhil Mansata: The new next

In a world increasingly obsessed with velocity, Nikhil Mansata is an elegant anomaly—a creative who honours slowness as a crucible of imagination. Raised in the hushed rhythm of Calcutta by an interior designer mother, Mansata’s first encounters with fashion were through secondhand issues of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Architectural Digest—coveted treasures that trickled in from the West via friends and family. “I was voracious,” he recalls. “These magazines became my window into fashion, design, and luxury. They taught me who did what, including the role of photographers, stylists, and editors. I learned how stories were built.”

That curiosity would later unfurl across continents. Moving to London at 18 marked a significant pivot. If Calcutta was the quiet sketch, London became the bold brushstroke Mansata’s curiously inclined creative soul was seeking. Studying amidst a diverse cohort of international students, Mansata found himself immersed in the sheer density of global creativity. “Everything in London felt heightened,” he recalls. “The standards, the aesthetics, the pace—it was the right time. I had just enough foundation to absorb it all.”

Early internships shaped him profoundly. A stint at Vogue India—before the magazine had even launched—placed him in the heart of editorial invention. An internship with couturier Sabyasachi, then in the formative years of his now-iconic maison, offered an up-close view of craft and identity. But it was in London that Mansata began to truly carve his space. His first big project? Styling a cover for Tank magazine’s India-themed issue, featuring model Moni Kangana Dutta in Louis Vuitton, shot in a hospice in New Delhi. “It was a lesson in self-reliance. I landed in India with two suitcases and had to figure out everything—from location, styling, to team coordination. That’s when I understood the real role of a creative director.”

His time at Condé Nast International, under the guidance of Anna Harvey, further cemented his understanding of legacy publishing at a global scale. “It was a creative crossroads—Vogue Russia, Vogue India, Vogue Turkey—each with its own notion of luxury, muse, and market. I absorbed everything like a sponge.” This training ground offered him structure but also the discernment to eventually unlearn. “To do things your way, you first have to understand how the system works,” he says.

Returning to India, Mansata became part of a generation that navigated the arrival of global titles with the urgency of local context. “We were young, sure. But we had a sense of who we were. The Western rule book said models should never be barefoot but in India, being barefoot can be poetic. It’s part of our cultural syntax. I kept what served us, and let go of what didn’t,” says Mansata with a sparkle in his eyes. Today, his creative practice continues to straddle worlds. Much like his early evenings spent leafing through magazines under a Calcutta sky, Mansata still builds worlds that are layered, cinematic, and intuitive. In his hands, styling becomes storytelling, and the site of authorship. “You’re not just dressing someone,” he says. “You’re constructing an atmosphere. You’re telling a story with texture, tone, and intent.”

Beyond his work as a creative director, Mansata has also been a longstanding advocate for sustainable fashion practices. “It really comes down to my childhood in Kolkata,” he reflects. “Whether it was working with the karigars at the Sabyasachi atelier or with Anamika Khanna—seeing up close how much talent goes into every stitch—that’s what grounded my understanding of luxury.” He speaks of a kind of intimacy with craftsmanship that few in the industry truly have. “A lot of people don’t realise that garments for houses like Dries Van Noten are made right here, in places like Ballygunge [in Kolkata]. And I’ve had the privilege of walking into those spaces and of seeing that work firsthand.”

That proximity made high fashion feel less distant, less mythologised. “When you understand who made it, how long it took, and what kind of talent was involved—it all becomes clearer. Luxury isn’t about price tags. It’s about the process. It’s about hands.”

Deep K Kaily: Beauty of the in-between

Towards the end of our conversation, I finally point out the profoundly poetic quality of Deep K Kailey’s name. In its original vernacular, ‘deep’ can mean ‘joy of light’, the word’s utterance softened by the touching of your teeth and tongue to enunciate the letter ‘d’. But in the hardness of the word’s English enunciation, it also strangely comes to indicate depth, adding a layer of lost and found meaning to the word. “Some days I bring light. Some days I go deep. It is similar to being of South Asian origin and growing up in the West. The magic is in the duality,” says Kailey with quiet reflection. The name’s straddling of this strange iridescent duality for me mirrors the core essence of Kailey’s path—an illuminating creative presence in the field of fashion, art, and culture, who also carries with herself the burning embers of a spiritual journey that is equally incandescent.

An artistic director, and cultural narrator Kailey’s most recent endeavour includes establishing Without Shape Without Form, a contemporary platform that explores Sikh philosophy and concepts through creativity. But before that, she carved a pioneering career across some of the world’s most celebrated titles: Dazed, Vogue India, Tatler, and even alongside Kim Jones in his early career. Despite the seemingly divergent nature of these two worlds, Kailey embodies them both with a panache that is deceptively simple. On probing, Kailey identifies the beginning of this parallelly synchronous journey in the oldest and basest of human emotions: Grief.

At just 10, Kailey lost her mother, an event that shifted her understanding of life and death. “It was probably the first time I started questioning life,” she reflects. That loss not only altered her internal compass but also her trajectory. If her mother had lived, she admits, she might have followed medicine professionally. Instead, she pursued art, supported not through formal exposure to culture, but through the freedom her family allowed her to choose. This creative impulse led Kailey to Kent to study fashion design, but it was a brief internship at Dazed that changed everything. “I fell in love with magazines,” she recalls. She balanced university with weekly stints at Dazed, curating a curriculum that aligned with her passions. That blend of formal training and hands-on experience gave her both credibility and vision. It also introduced her to Nicola Formichetti, whose mentorship—and encouragement to embrace her dual identity as a South Asian growing up in the UK—deepened her understanding of representation.

As her career soared, Kailey worked on Kim Jones’s first shows, helped launch Vogue India from London, and styled stories that challenged dominant narratives. But beneath the surface, a spiritual current was gathering force. A cousin introduced her to Simran, a technique that quieted the mind and offered the clarity she had long sought. “Within 10 minutes, I knew this was the truth,” Kailey says. Her inner and outer lives, once parallel, began to intertwine.

That alignment became action during the pandemic, when she co-led a massive food redistribution effort, feeding communities and connecting with seva (selfless service) in a tangible way. From that came the expansion of WSWF, which now partners with major institutions like the V&A and Arnolfini to host immersive exhibitions rooted in Sikh wisdom. “If I do my job well,” she says with her eyes focusing on the wall, “WSWF will outlive me—and no one will remember me.”

Kailey interrogates what it means to design from a place of spiritual rootedness without falling prey to nostalgia. For her, the South Asian aesthetic isn’t a static lookbook of motifs; it’s a consciousness, and an ethic of courage, compassion, and purpose. Her curatorial eye resists cliché and legacy-seeking, and India, she insists, is not a singular aesthetic or identity—but a multiplicity masquerading as a country. “Its power is in the soil and the soul—of many, not one,” she says. And it’s this pluralism, this collective spirit, that inspires her methodology as an artistic director.

Yogesh Choudhary: Power of weaves

For Yogesh Chaudhary, director of Jaipur Rugs, carpets are far more than decorative accents. He, who heads a brand now internationally synonymous with Indian luxury, believes rugs are soulful artefacts, repositories of energy, memory, and meaning. “Each hand-knotted rug takes three to 12 months to make. It’s three to four artisans pouring their time, livelihood, and blessings into a single piece,” he explains to me, as we connect over Zoom. “There’s an energy that lives in the product.”

That reverence for craftsmanship, and for the hands behind it, lies at the heart of Jaipur Rugs. What began as a modest family-run enterprise founded by Chaudhary’s father in 1978 has today evolved into a globally recognised brand at the forefront of India’s design renaissance. Chaudhary, who joined the company in 2006 after a college sabbatical turned into a lifelong calling, now leads the brand’s creative and strategic vision. From export-led sales to storytelling-rich campaigns, he has been instrumental in positioning Jaipur Rugs as a global ambassador of Indian craft.

But it wasn’t always a planned trajectory. Chaudhary had been studying computer science in North America when a summer visit to India—and an unfortunate office robbery—led him to cancel his internship and stay back. “I joined the business at 19 thinking it was just for a year,” he recalls. “But I never went back.” He immersed himself in operations, finance, and international sales, eventually realising that what Jaipur Rugs offered wasn’t just a product, but a powerful narrative of heritage, sustainability, and artistry that the world was increasingly ready to embrace.

Under Chaudhary’s direction, the brand’s global presence has grown remarkably. Yet, what sets Jaipur Rugs apart is not scale alone, but a clear design philosophy: To restore the dignity of handcraft while presenting it in ways that resonate across cultures. Their international campaigns subvert expectations and recast the rug as a living, breathing companion in everyday life.

Some of the leading image-makers of our times, in collaboration with the company’s creative director Greg Foster, have recast the totemic rug at the centre of campaigns that have made the carpet travel from the snows of Gulmarg to the clay tennis courts of London. My personal favourite? A grainy, sepiatinted vision of Kathak dancer Aditi Mangaldas serenading atop the rugs under a proscenium, all the while evoking the decadent luxury of a medieval Awadhi court. “We want to put carpets in a different perspective, and make them look like they are having fun,” Chaudhary explains. “They’re not just commodities to us. They have a hearth-like quality and they bring families and homes together.” The brand’s creative evolution has been shaped in part by its collaboration with Foster, the former Editor-in Chief of Architecture Digest India. His global eye and intuitive grasp of India’s visual lexicon have helped build a unique design language that is ubiquitously rooted in India, yet undeniably international in appeal.

Today, where sustainable production practices threatened to get reduced to mere buzzwords in the name of corporate greenwashing, Jaipur Rugs works directly with over 40,000 artisans, bypassing traditional middlemen to offer better wages and fairer working conditions. Monthly payments, non-punitive quality controls, and mindset development initiatives through the Jaipur Rugs Foundation reflect an ethos that’s as socially progressive as it is commercially savvy. “We treat our artisans like customers,” Chaudhary says. “When their dignity is restored, the quality of work transforms.”

From its tactile, hand-knotted beginnings to its sweeping global vision, Jaipur Rugs today reflects the future of Indian design, where heritage and innovation walk side by side, and every thread tells a story.

Krishna Choudhary: Labour of love

"I manifested it,” says Krishna Choudhary, the creative director and founder of Santi Jewels, while sitting across me in his private, invite-only jewellery salon in London’s Mayfair district. We are currently poring over his latest art acquisition (something that has left me speechless for the past five minutes)—an extremely rare set of glass-painted Horus eyes that date back to 100 BC. But to ask Choudhary questions about pieces from his private collection is an exercise in futility, that will always be met with the designer’s signature candour. It is only through getting to know him that one can begin comprehending the force of this man, not just as an entrepreneur and designer, but as a true blue-blooded champion and preserver of lost crafts and heritage.

In the rarefied world of haute joaillerie, Choudhary is forging his own singular path that is quietly bridging the intellectual gravitas of Mughal aesthetics with the precision of European craftsmanship. As the leading man behind the curious wonder that is Santi Jewels, Choudhary has gone beyond the norms of being a mere luxury jeweller and successfully positioned himself as a master orchestrator of dialogues between centuries, cultures, and forms.

Raised in the frescoed havelis of Jaipur, Choudhary grew up surrounded by quiet grandeur. “At the time, I didn’t realise the rarity of what I was seeing,” he admits. “But even then, those spaces had a focus, a calm, that made you want to observe, to really see.” That early visual literacy, sharpened by handling 17th- and 18th-century objects, evolved into an intuitive grasp of form, proportion, and historical nuance. Although formally trained in gemology, Choudhary credits his father—a collector and connoisseur with longstanding ties to Italian ateliers, after whom Choudhary’s own brand is named—for honing his sensibility. “He was a man of very few words, and never explained why a piece was beautiful,” Choudhary recalls. “He just said it is. I had to teach myself the instinctive process of discerning that beauty and authenticity through my eyes.”

Santi Jewels, founded in 2019, is the culmination of that deeply personal education. Every piece is a unique object, often years in the making, merging Indian storytelling with European innovation. Consider a silver-tinted bracelet that Choudhary hands me where over 900 hand-set pavé diamonds shimmer across a titanium form, weightless yet opulent. Or a set of earrings with violet sapphires set upside down—a deliberate subversion of traditional setting conventions, transforming faceting into a form of sculpture.

Coming from an established family of jewellers, Choudhary justifies his decision of starting his label as being driven by a need to say something to the world. When I prod him further, he pauses, points at his outrageously beautiful creations and says, “Each of these design decisions, be it about the setting style or the cut of the stone, is about surprise. I want my work to challenge what is expected of jewellery from South Asia.”

Santi Jewels produces no more than 25 pieces annually, working closely with master artisans in both India and Italy. “If I wanted success purely in numbers, I wouldn’t be doing jewellery,” he says, wryly. “This is about passion. Each piece is a work of art.” His reverence for craftsmanship is matched by his scholarly engagement with art history; collaborations with museums and universities are as central to his practice as studio work. “To educate is the greatest gift,” he says. “And jewellery is part of a larger ecosystem—metalwork, textiles, painting—all speak the same language.”

I look around at the parlour where we are seated, in the midst of a red-tinted Ganesha pahadi miniature hanging across an oil-portrait of Indian princess Victoria Gouramma. On the table before us, amidst the heirloom-like pieces that Choudhary creates and never recreates (a point that he drives across to me with firm pride), sit a handful of gemstones from his collection—including the world’s largest faceted blue sapphire, weighing 500 carats, all the way from Sri Lanka. As Choudhary walks me through his passionate acquisitions and his eccentric design processes, I soon realise that in a market driven by effervescent trends, he is someone who truly exemplifies the permanence of stone-etched poetry

All images: Noor-U-Nisa

This article originally appeared in the Harper's Bazaar India June-July print edition.
 

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