The 90s was a different era for fashion – that was the time when Delhi fashion found its roots with the opening of some stores, very few shows that were organised at very small scale. Bombay and Calcutta were already established markets for designers then and one of the biggest shows of the 90s was held in Mumbai with the line up of designers like Rohit Khosla , Rohit Bal , Geetanjali Kashyap, Tarun Tahiliani , JJ Valaya – all big shots, and I was a part of that show too. It was choreographed by Lubna Adam and Mehr Jesia was a part of the show and she used to be the ‘it’ girl. The 90s was the time when Delhi experienced a fashion movement, something it has never seen before. It meant more store openings, more shows for designers. That was the time when most models were in Mumbai, so whenever anything would happen in Delhi, models were required to come from Mumbai and that meant a huge thing as it required a certain budget.


It was the time when Hauz Khas Village used to be the fashion hub as Kavita Bhartia came up with the designer store in 1989, one of the firsts for Delhi. One of the big shows there was organised by Rohit Khosla, who used to be the big daddy of fashion then and did everything with a certain class and panache. Jaya Bachchan came for the opening of Ogaan and it was a big event.


For a designer like me, most meetings happened at home, which was also my studio. I used to live in Civil Lines and had a kitchen that was no less than a ballroom in space and that was where I started my work from. To source raw material we would go to Chandni Chowk, Jama Masjid. Business meetings or networking meant visiting studios and for designers like me, the studio was my home. The 90s was the time in fashion when Delhi actually started becoming the fashion capital and underwent an immense change in terms of number of designers, shows and designer stores.