The art of fashion image-making with James Lalthanzuala and Raunak Singh Rana

In 2017, when British fashion photographer Nick popular medium to understand clothes that were meant to be seen in motion, he said it’s important to realise that the medium was built on the visual codes and language of fashion photography. Ultimately, most fashion is consumed through a barrage of images on social media, in press releases, editorials—and in print, one hopes. However, when does the commercial image lead to affect and begin to tell a story we want to believe in?

It’s consciously thinking of the fashion image as artifice and inherently performative, constructed with a narrative—and building every element towards a moment. Stylist James Lalthanzuala views clothing through layers, shapes and forms, lending him a propensity to see styling as a sculptural installation, creating alternate worlds of being. For creative director Raunak Singh Rana, it’s taking brands like Nike to the street, infusing the local and the familial for the ultimate street cred.

JAMES LALTHANZUALA

Growing up in Mizoram, James Lalthanzuala recalls being influenced by a wave of Korean punk alongside other youngbloods in the state in the era of the Y2K computer, when subcultures travelled through pixels. Everyone’s hair was spiked, their belts shiny and jeans torn as they headbanged to grunge and junk rock bands that were on the rise. Simultaneously present were side-swept bangs of ‘emo bois’—perhaps the first performative men of this generation. Amidst a wave of underground style suddenly being made accessible, Lalthanzuala would seek out other icons of punk style, arriving at Vivienne Westwood and John Galliano.

Punk’s conflicting yet deliberate layering of patterns and textiles comes through in Lalthanzuala’s capturing of the punk scene of Delhi, where sports jerseys, sweaters and jackets enveloped the body like armour—while houndstooth coexisted seamlessly below striped corsets and flowery skirts. “I like creating unusual juxtapositions,”he says, “A way of reimagining clothes that are not often styled that way, seeing their potential.” There is always an element of theatricality that he infuses into his work, which transforms the sharp contours of a man’s trousers into a sculptural installation, taking the fashion image from the realm of merely commercial to an art photograph with fashion play.

Growing up ruffling through his mother’s closet with his sisters, Lalthanzuala is innately drawn to colour and form to craft a story about clothes and the body. Pairing heavily embroidered scarves with neon glittery ensembles and six-inch heels, Lalthanzuala conjured a psychedelic queer utopia as a never-ending rave for fashion designer Manish Arora’s Summer/Resort 2020 show at Lakme Fashion Week. Working closely with designers and photographers is something Lalthanzuala is partial to, coming up with magical worlds of make-belief like Diya’s duniya.

Diya Joukani somersaults around the room like a cardboard figurine tumbling down an Alice in Wonderland universe in shimmering Rahul Mishra with art nouveau patterning emulating the painter Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss. It was a shape-shifting world where anything was possible, as Diya turned into a chandelier in the middle of the dining table, dressed in Devanshi Jain by Lalthanzuala. Collective imaginations run wild in the creation of these surreal worlds, which Lalthanzuala enjoys exploring the possibilities of—toying with the idea of dressing for a picnic beyond time in the hills of Darjeeling for Cord Studio.

Two sisters in striped trousers and ties appear to have teleported out of school—or ‘The Shining’—into a forced activity of posing with an extremely large fish someone in their family must have caught on the vacation. Ducks waddle in a man’s shirt as he sits, grim, before Dal Lake—however, a clock on the Pir Panjal range behind him reveals it to be a wallpaper in a photo studio, making it all an artifice. Much like many Indian families posing before holiday destinations, encapsulating their dreams of travel. “I styled them thinking of the clothes our uncles and grandparents would wear,” he said, “I love working with casting real people, and the twins were cast that way. It’s overall very relatable.”

Perhaps that’s the reason why the stylist would rather not live anywhere else beyond Delhi. As much as he looks at Japanese maximalist streetstyle and the new wave of post-war designers changing fashion’s relationship to the body through layering, he is most inspired by the city around him. “I observe so many people who pass by me and there are colourful characters in Delhi,” says the stylist, who moved to Delhi after a degree in tourism and was recommended to pursue styling after a friend noticed his eclectic braids and personal style at fashion shows that he would keep visiting. “I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” he concludes.

RAUNAK SINGH RANA

 

An auto driver gives his vehicle an adoring wipe after it’s been freshly repainted with bright flowers and leaping horses in the familiar style of maximalist street iconography on buses and trucks in the country. Amidst primary colours jostling for attention, one suddenly spots the appearance of the Nike swoosh—and before we can abandon it as a fluke, we notice this speed drive has been named ‘Nike Express’—painted as a proclamation almost on its back. The driver smiles knowingly as he slides his shades on behind a sparkling windscreen embossed with the name ‘Pinky’ above a subtitle derivative of Nike’s tagline reading ‘Just Did It’—as he revs up the engine in Airforce 1.

Capturing the sleek chaos of the Indian street and somehow situating Nike within its loud and colourful realm has become Raunak Singh Rana’s signature. For the 26-year-old Creative and Design Specialist at Nike, it has felt like he was preparing for this job his entire life, growing up as a sneakerhead—his modest shoe collection rested in one corner of his Delhi residence—intensely sketching and building projects around sneakers through school and university. Moreover, our generation came of age during a hypervisibilised era of Nike storytelling, when LeBron James held the heartbeats of Cleveland during his first game returning to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the dreams of every footballer right before they competed in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Nike sold their narrative through heightened emotion, where belief meant everything—and ultimately the purchase of the next drop.

Singh works with RiseIndia, the strategic partner by Bhaane brands for Nike in the country. It’s a stark jump from football stadiums where Nike’s campaigns are shot to a dining room in Saket posed as Southall, where a Punjabi family hollers during an England match over parathas and achaar. Their father, in his typical fashion, calls a friend to rant about a foul play. It’s the familiar story of every South Asian resorting to support other countries, having never seen their own step onto FIFA grounds—more poignant in Southall—and reflecting that irony is the dadi, who smiles coolly through it all in her Nike England jersey. “It’s a coloniser’s jersey for me, so I couldn’t think of any place else beyond Southall to tell the story of the campaign,” says Singh, “My colleague Nandini brought her grandmother and my friend Gurdev brought his dad and our photographer Aryan Solanki started playing classic Punjabi hits, everyone started dancing—and it felt like being with family. A bit of Southall in Delhi.”

Developing new promotions for India isn’t required, but it’s what Singh desires. “I had to convince people that to sell a shoe, this is what one needed to do for it,” he adds, “It’s become quite clear it’s Gen Z who rules the internet.” It’s a sense of the familial which he infuses into Nike’s world, particularly through his campaign for Airforce 1, where his father sat proudly on a Royal Enfield in his bike workshop in Karol Bagh, where Singh would spend a significant amount of time as a young boy observing him and listening to the stories of his adventurous friends and clients going on cross-country motorcycle tours—which his father had a fair share of, as memorialised in photographs framed over his desk. “My father is a legend in the motorcycle community,” gushes Singh, “I would be surprised hearing how biking around made his friends perceive cities differently.”

It’s with that eye of curiosity that Singh approaches every Nike opening in cities like Surat, which is explored through Harish Shah’s diamond business, where the manufacturer creates a sparkling swoosh from loose diamonds—replicated in screenprint by Raju, a screenprinter in a textile unit elsewhere in the city. A corner of Usha Niketan in Delhi turns into the Netherlands as a bunch of supporters of the football team share kebabs after a late-night match, still in their jerseys. “I even cast Surender, who runs Catlee Momos right behind our house, for the ‘Unmistakeable’ campaign,” he smiles, “He is an underdog who beat the odds like my dad. We’ve seen him become insanely popular over time.” Every photograph throbs with palpable feeling beyond cold marketing to become something found in a friend’s gallery, clicked during a heartfelt moment. Indeed, it’s friendship that has made Singh’s four years at Nike and previously Converse enriching—particularly through conversations with his mentor Nimish Shah, who was Creative Director at Bhaane overseeing these brands for the Indian market. “Time with him made me polish my vision,” he said, “He empowered me with the faith that I can continue doing this, without compromising.”

Singh has also stuck to a close batch of friends since they collectively transferred to Srishti School of Art and Design Technology. “Someone who photographs frequently for us is Archit who was my roommate for most of college,” he says, “I’ve seen his work and watched it evolve closely for many years.” Meeting other young photographers like Param or Aryan Solanki, each of whom brings their own vision of photographing youth and the city, Singh is excited to work with a new generation of creatives through Nike. “Opening a creative studio feels like the next step,” he adds. “I also want to explore my artistic practice in the future.”

Credits: Creative direction and photography: Pranoy Sarkar; styling: James Lalthanzuala; jacket by Anurag Gupta; pants by Chérie N Atelier; full set: Bloni Atelier; Photography: Aryan Solanki; creative direction: Raunak Singh Rana

This article originally appeared in Harper's Bazaar India's October 2026 print issue.

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