One of Mishra’s long-term goals, which he’s frequently spoken about since he co-founded his own label with his wife Divya Mishra in 2013, is to employ one million people—some day. In December 2021, he bought a 50,000 sq ft factory in Noida, a city widely considered a suburb of New Delhi, where 300 of his approximately 1,000 employees work. Most of the rest of the artisans work from their own villages. The company engages 700 to 900 artisans in embroidery centres in six or seven villages across the country, the key village is Baudhpur in West Bengal, led by Afzal Zariwala, a master craftsman. 

With this ambitious goal, Mishra is also striving to preserve craft traditions and skills for future artisans. “Less than one per cent of craftsmen in India can handle high level embroidery and a certain level of perfection—it’s only found with master craftsmen who have been doing this for years.” When it comes to conjuring the kind of couture that Mishra dreams up, he requires such experienced master craftsmen. His aesthetic is often heavy on the embroidery, but this approach is not only for the look: “It creates work,” he says, “and therefore people get paid.” 

For him, it all comes down to simple arithmetic: he cites the example of machine embroidery producing the equivalent of 50 hours of human labour versus hand embroidery which could produce 5,000 hours of human labour. Handcrafted items are made with deliberate care and carry a higher price. Zendaya’s sari, which for the designer was a “relatively simpler design”, took 3,000 hours to produce, while more complex and intricate pieces can take up to 5,000 hours, spread over the course of anything from three to six months. In other words, he’s championing slow fashion, employment and engagement. 

Sometimes this feeling of responsibility eclipses his creativity, but Mishra says he is willing to forgo his artistic impulses to ensure his artisans have enough work to remain employed. “Even if I want to make a really minimalist simple piece, some plain garments—an aesthetic which, by the way, I really like—I can’t, because I’m responsible for the employment of all these people,” the designer explains. “Design should create participation and engagement for a prolonged period of time.” 

It might seem simplistic to attribute this sense of responsibility to his childhood, but the supporting evidence is substantial. Mishra spent the first ten years of his life in Malhausi, a small village near the city of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. He describes his extremely humble beginnings as a time of hardship, beauty and freedom. “I had a difficult childhood in the sense that I had no toys to play with, no new clothes—everything was passed down—but it was the most beautiful time of my life, because I could do whatever I wanted,” the designer says, recalling how he would spend time in nature and get lost in his own imagination. “I would play in the garden and create my own characters and scenarios; it was also a time when I experienced the purity and beauty of nature.” 

Nature and spirituality are Mishra’s main sources of inspiration. His Cosmos collection, which was conceived after a trip to the Maldives and based on the Sanskrit phrase aham brahamasmi, which can be interpreted as “I am the cosmos”, showcased the designer’s inspiration through intricately crafted celestial and aquatic motifs. The Tree of Life collection featured ornate and heavily sculpted leaves, petals and other vegetal motifs, specifically inspired by a ritual he witnessed in his village as a child: the designer spent much of his time with his grandmother who, every summer, took him to tie a thread around a banyan tree for longevity and other auspicious reasons. “With what we’re doing to our planet right now, we really should be worshipping trees and nature,” Mishra reflects. “They are the real deities.” 

Mishra’s upbringing and his grandmother’s influence is still fresh in his head. His only “toy” as a child was her charkha, a spinning wheel more than two metres tall. His grandmother was born in the 1930s and grew up during a time when Gandhian principles were strongly championed in India. Self-sufficiency and self-reliance were imperative concepts for the development of a nation on the brink of independence; Mishra’s grandmother would give her woven cloth to local tailor and wear whatever he made from it. “It was a beautiful barter system,” Mishra says. 

Mishra is attempting to implement a system that allows his artisans to sustain their livelihood and contribute to reviving rural economies. During the pandemic, many artisans were left without work and returned to their villages. Mishra started employing some of them but allowed them to work from their villages. In this way, they would be able to spend the money that they earned in their own villages, contributing to other local businesses there. “Bottom line is people have to get paid, and people have to be employed. It’s better that they’re getting that money living in their own village than an expensive city,” says the designer.

He is also keen to uphold those values of sustainability and Gandhian self-reliance: the civil rights leader advocated for buying things that were “made in India”. In the world of high fashion and haute couture, Mishra is trying to change the perception of that label—one he finds still carries a stigma of being inferior, despite the fact that Indian crafting and design techniques are widely used throughout the industry. “‘Made in France’ or ‘Made in Italy’ are still considered superior,” he says. His own global success is a step towards correcting this misconception, and he is grateful that other major houses are starting to recognise the value of his country’s creatives. “When you acknowledge that the work is made in India, you acknowledge the artisans and workers who you are responsible for. I’m thankful that Dior thinks in this way and are acknowledging it.”

Dior—and other fashion houses such as Chanel—is using Indian embroidery and craft technique in their designs, most famously in the historic Dior show which took place at the Gateway of India in April, when creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri celebrated the maison’s longstanding relationship with the Chanakya School of Craft, paying homage to the subcontinent’s contribution to international fashion. 

The subsequent glamorous opening of the NMACC has allowed for a cultural ownership of allowing Indian arts and culture—from historic and traditional to more contemporary ones, which have grown out of said traditions—to thrive in a space built for them. The centre’s opening presentation is an exhibition, India in Fashion, curated by Condé Nast editor Hamish Bowles, which traces the country’s impact on western fashion, and is indicative of the world’s recognition of Indian creativity. It includes the works of renowned Indians designers such as Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Anita Dongre, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, all of whom are keeping craft traditions alive.

In this ocean of talent, Mishra has captured the world’s attention because he operates beyond global and local cultural expectations by crafting the kind of garments he does—art pieces—which hold universal appeal. Add to this his knowledge and experimental application of embroidery on different textiles, such as wool, in original and often unexpected ways, and it’s no wonder his work stands out. It is also one of the reasons he won the International Woolmark Prize in 2014, a significant turning point in the designer’s career.

The NMACC exhibition includes four of Mishra’s recent pieces, including one specially commissioned for the event—a hand-embroidered chintz dress— which are exemplars of how he values traditional practices and propels them into the present contemporary era. In fact, the exhibition begins with a jellyfish- inspired ensemble from Alexander McQueen, the detail on which is reminiscent of iridescent beetle wings used in 15th-century Mughal embroidery, and ends with Mishra’s own dramatic, ornate, and intricate jellyfish piece from his Cosmos collection. It is this piece, and surprisingly not Zendaya’s internet- breaking sari, that is among the designer’s favourite creation. The outfit, which took over 5,000 hours to make, reflects Mishra’s core belief of valuing processes. “Look at all the work that went into it,” he says, citing the hours, heavy embroidery, and complex craftwork. “The slowness of process becomes that much more powerful”.

And while his process might be slow, his trajectory to design stardom seems to be accelerating. Mishra isn’t concerned that his recognition is relatively recent. “It just means the work I’m doing now is the best. It means we’re growing.” After all, what he is creating is more than mere clothing. “I treat fashion as art, and clothing as a canvas upon which I can draw, create, embroider, and reflect. We create art.”

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