Kartik Research SS25 at Paris Fashion Week

Kartik Research SS25 / Spring Summer 2025 at Paris Fashion Week

Kartik Research presents SS25 collection ‘delhi’s dreaming’ as part of Paris Fashion Week

Maybe it’s too early to reflect on your own work when you’ve only worked for three years, but something weird happened after our last show. It was the first Indian brand on the menswear calendar and so it definitely became a thing for a day or two. When I got back home, I got invited to a dinner with ministers from the Indian cabinet and twenty-ish “young entrepreneurs” who are “the future of India.” While it was kind of nice to be listened to, my one thought upon reflecting was that maybe we have more of a responsibility now. It can be dangerous to build your brand around a cultural identity.

While I do think Kartik Research SS25 collections so far have been a real personal reflection on what it means to be Indian today, I can’t help but think that sometimes we lean into the romance too much. That side definitely exists, there’s amazing palaces, intricate stone work that we reference for embroidery, very interesting characters to study: from Maharaja’s to cricket captains. This will always be an integral part of our brand narrative. For this season specifically, we referenced certain ideas of what people wear in their devotional practices. We have these mass pilgrimages up different mountains, and festivals that people travel for. People often combine ceremonial tailoring and, floral garlands with sport shoes and workwear that is perhaps out of necessity.

The other important devotional practice we researched this season is the artisanal pursuit of excellence. The uniform of the makers is often made from hand spun cotton and linen and designed to wear in gracefully. Both these devotional practices are inherently anti-capitalist. The artisan definitely relies on money, but their practice isn’t built to scale. Beyond sustenance, there’s a romantic pursuit of excellence.

However, there is also a sense of underlying discomfort with life over here. In school, I saw the curriculum change and become more religious. We couldn’t critique our own history, you just got points for regurgitating a version of what had happened. Freedom of speech constraints on social media and in the news are definitely noticeable. Every other big Indian Netflix movie that’s come out in the last year is borderline propaganda and the censorship is wild. It’s a version of India that probably affects my day to day more than the Instagrammable architecture that we sometimes reference.

I joke sometimes that India is the new Japan, in that foreign tourists can come for a couple months, take nice photos and make it their personality. There’s definitely a social media appeal and a unique aesthetic sensibility here. And while that’s probably really good for business, maybe the clothes need to find more of a balance. They need to find a way to keep it real.

Weirdly, despite the pessimistic rant I just went on, I’m super high on India’s creative economy. We opened a store in Delhi a couple months ago and it was the first time I started to really engage with the community of local photographers, stylists and designers. Before that I’d meet them at parties but I was just stuck working in my apartment. It’s pretty apparent that there’s a real self-belief andan ability to take initiative here that probably exists in only a few places in the world. There’s no infrastructure to showcase their work to the world beyond posting on Instagram and hoping it resonates. The market for what you have to offer (people with money and taste) is quite frankly tiny. Yet there’s a sense of optimism. People are really just driven by a combination of blind faith and a determination to put India on the map.

For Kartik Research Spring Summer 2025, this season I wanted to capture this spirit through the clothing. We worked a lot with handwoven khadi fabrics. These are fabrics with a lot of character and you can really feel the level of human effort that goes into making them. It’s also a fabric that is closely tied to our independence movement. It became a symbol of Indian uprising. It was a tool to reinstitute national pride in the Gandhi independence movement, and in a full circle way it is becoming the cornerstone of a new Indian cultural awakening.

For this run, I worked with Converse and travelled to Bagru Rajasthan to work with hand block printers. We worked with the Titanwala Museum and their archive of blocks to print on the pairs of Converse. We also worked with expert Aari embroiderers. A technique where typically smaller pieces of fabric (in this case, a pair of shoes) are attached to a net which in turn is tied to a wooden frame. Tiny beads of glass, thread and ornaments are then hand embroidered onto each piece. We worked with a technique called Zardozi threadwork to add texture and dimensionality to the pieces.

Kartik Kumra Distributed by Village on behalf of Kartik Research.

About Kartik Research:

Founded by Kartik Kumra in 2021, Kartik Research is an artisanal fashion brand based in New Delhi, India. The core tenet of Kartik Research is to reintroduce humanness into clothing. Each item of clothing has some handmade element to it. The shirting and quilts are produced on handlooms and dyed with plants and herbs and the embroideries are done by hand. As a result, each piece that is produced has its own unique nature, embracing its imperfect character.

Each season the brand visits a subculture from India’s heritage. Our debut collection explored the aesthetics of the ‘Beat Music’ scene that emerged from 1960s psychedelic rock’s fascination with India. Later collections have gone on to answer questions about the aesthetics of aspiration. Why do we aspire to own certain things? In a banana fibre weaving village we work with in Karnataka, jewellery and home ornamentation is made from crocheting banana fibre. Is this a function of just being resourceful or is the community’s value compass oriented towards their own heritage? This is a microcosm of the wider question Kartik Research aims to solve by putting forgotten Indian crafts back on the global.

About Kartik Research x Converse:

For their Spring Summer 25 season, Kartik Research worked with Converse to customize Converse’s iconic Chuck Taylor, which is the ideal canvas for creativity and experimentation. Our specialty at KR is to work expert artisans around India to make pieces that recontextualize our cultural heritage. The idea is to be respectful of our craftsmanship and harness it in interesting ways that resonate around the globe. The idea of reworking an American classic with Indian artisanship seamlessly fit into our brand DNA.

In our collection this season, we referenced the idea of devotional practices in India. Specifically the uniforms people wear while on pilgrimages. It’s a combination of functional workwear with spiritual details, like wooden beads, or jute bags. To bring this essence into the Converse pairs, we worked with a Delhi based NGO called Naari Shakti, a women cooperative who specialize in jute bracelets.