Indian couturier Rahul Mishra, who is set to open the India Couture Week 2025 later this week in New Delhi, spent last week painting Paris, one of the world's fashion capitals, red. The celebrated designer presented his Fall 2025 Couture collection 'Becoming Love' at the Paris Couture Week with rapper Cardi B as his muse and drawing inspiration from the works of Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt.
Over 300 artisans from his atelier worked relentlessly for over a thousand hours to create intricate ensembles reflecting Klimt's philosophy by hand. These garments narrated the seven-stage journey of love -- from Dilkashi (attraction) to Maut (transcendence).
And there was one song that Rahul Mishra said kept coming back to him while he was visualising his new clothing line. It was Satrangi Re from Mani Ratnam's 1998 film Dil Se.. Penned by Gulzar and composed by AR Rahman, the track is still memorable for its lyrics dipped in Sufism and the enduring quality of its unique melody.
In an exclusive interview with NDTV, the designer said Satrangi Re stayed with him for years-like an echo.
"It is one of those rare creations that captures the entire emotional spectrum of love in a uniquely Indian, deeply Sufi, and profoundly poetic way... And when we began shaping 'Becoming Love', that song came rushing back. A few months ago, while we were researching the stages of love-through poetry, literature, craft, film, and art-I remember playing the song in the studio.
"I played it for the whole team. I wanted them to feel what I felt: how AR Rahman's haunting score, Gulzar Saab's piercing words, Santosh Sivan's breathtaking visuals, and Mani Ratnam's poetic direction-all came together to translate love into colour, sound, and silence," Rahul Mishra said.
The song was not a direct influence in terms of design, but in spirit. It became more than just a reference-it became an emotional benchmark.
"It reminded us how love can be innocent and obsessive, fragile and fierce, sacred and all-consuming-all at once. Each stage in 'Becoming Love'-from Dilkashi (attraction) to Maut (transcendence)-could find a visual and emotional parallel in Satrangi Re. There's something incredibly universal in that song, yet deeply personal too. Just like love itself. So yes, the song wasn't just in the background-it was in the air. It helped shape the mood of the collection, and its emotional architecture," he said.
Through Satrangi Re, Rahul Mishra found an opening into his new collection and it led him to Gustav Klimt.
"I kept going back to Satrangi Re-not just as a song, but as a philosophical arc. The depth of meaning in that melody, its embodiment of the seven shades of love, became the emotional spine of the collection. From there, we began exploring poetry, literature, craft, culture-and eventually, art. It was during this exploration that Gustav Klimt emerged as a guiding force. His work felt like a fascinating contradiction: visually opulent, yet emotionally raw."
According to the designer, what struck him the most was the way he captured women and not just their beauty, but their mystery.
"In his Water Serpents, for example, he painted four women in a kind of suspended dream state. Their bodies dissolve into florals, gold, and movement-as if the emotion was more important than the figure itself. The floral motifs felt almost totemic, deeply symbolic, like they were guarding a secret only love could unlock. There was a kind of reverence in Klimt's gaze-a soft surrender to the subjects he painted. It wasn't about control. It was about devotion. That really stayed with me.
"In 'Becoming Love', we tried to channel that spirit-not by replicating Klimt literally, but by absorbing his language and translating it into our own. The gold, the broken shapes, the layering of embroidery-each was a way of capturing emotion, not form. For us, the female form became a medium to represent love as reverence. The clothes weren't just garments; they were prayers. Just like Klimt, we weren't painting women-we were painting presence," he added.
The actual making of the collection of 'Becoming Love' took about four months.
"Once we had the narrative of the seven stages of love, each stage unfolded almost like a separate collection within the whole. We approached it like a journey-beginning with the innocence of attraction, moving through the chaos of longing and infatuation, and finally arriving at unity, disappearance, and transcendence. Our atelier of over 300 artisans worked relentlessly.
"Each piece was created entirely by hand. Some of them took over a thousand hours-threads of gold embroidered like whispers of emotion, petals sewn with a kind of meditative silence. No machines. No shortcuts. Only patience, and a deep respect for the process."
For Rahul Mishra, 'Becoming Love' is an ever-growing, ever-shifting emotion.
"It's both a compass and a mirror. It doesn't just define a phase of life or a passing inspiration-it's a way of being. A feeling that drives me every single day. It's not confined to personal love. It's just as much about my love for craft, for storytelling, for process.
"It's the way I look at embroidery not as surface work, but as soul work. It's the way Divya (his wife and business partner) and I look at design-not just as fashion, but as a language that includes architecture, industrial form, space, emotion. Everything we create is born out of that slow-burning, all-consuming reverence. That's what 'Becoming Love' really is. Professionally too, it defines our journey," he said.
As someone who has become a regular at global fashion events like the Paris Couture Week or the Met Gala, has it become the usual for him to go globetrotting for some of the biggest marquee events in the industry?
The designer said, "I don't think it can ever become 'usual'."
"To be part of the Paris Haute Couture calendar is a rare, profound honour-and I carry that awareness with me every single time. Haute couture isn't just fashion-it's the highest form of it. And to have my work accepted within that framework, by the French institutions and the Paris audience, is something I'll never take for granted.
"Paris is truly my karmabhoomi-my land of action and transformation. It doesn't just give me a platform; it demands more of me. Each collection asks for greater storytelling, more refinement, more poetry. The moment you think you've arrived, the city reminds you that you're still becoming. It keeps you honest."
Rahul Mishra, however, still remembers his roots in janmabhoomi.
"Back home in India, hundreds of hands work in silence-crafting each petal, each stitch with devotion. Then there's our core team of seven or eight who travel with me to Paris, and over a hundred more who support us there during every show. From the chaos of fittings to the stillness before the lights go on-it's a collective dream unfolding.
"To see our work-born from Indian villages, from stories of the land and the heart-find space on the global stage... It's humbling. It's a responsibility we carry with great respect. Every time we show in Paris, we walk into that room with the same nervous energy, the same gratitude, the same fire to say something honest through our clothes. No, it's never usual. It's sacred."
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