For more than three decades, Anita Dongre has helped define the way India dresses for its biggest moments. Long before sustainability and conscious luxury became the industry's favorite topics, she was working with artisan communities, preserving centuries-old craft traditions and proving that Indian fashion could be both deeply rooted in heritage and globally relevant.
Today, her designs are worn by royalty, Hollywood stars, business leaders, and brides across generations. Yet her most enduring achievement extends far beyond celebrity clientele or red carpets. She has built a fashion house that has elevated craftsmanship into the heart of modern luxury, proving that tradition isn't something to be preserved behind glass, but something that can evolve, inspire and remain profoundly desirable.
If anyone has had a front-row seat to the evolution of Indian occasionwear, it is Dongre. Yet the most interesting transformation she has witnessed isn't happening with the bride. It's happening with the groom.
There was a time not so long ago, in the arc of fashion history when the Indian groom was an afterthought. The bride chose the palette, the mother-in-law chose the fabric, and the groom simply showed up, resplendent in whatever had been decided for him. That era, says Anita Dongre, is over. "The Indian groom today makes his own choices instead of someone making choices for him," she says, settling into a conversation that ranges from hand-painted textiles to the psychology of confidence. "One sees the men that are drawn to our brand as largely self-made, discerning and looking beyond tradition to personal style." Men are becoming more comfortable expressing themselves through what they wear."
It's a shift she has watched unfold in fitting rooms and consultations, in the questions grooms ask and the ones they no longer need to. A decade ago, those conversations were almost entirely about surface; colour, embroidery, how ornate was ornate enough. "Fabric is key," she explains. "They ask about breathability, comfort, construction and how a garment will feel over several hours."
He may not arrive with the same craft knowledge as his partner or his parents, she notes, but the modern groom has developed his own fluency ; in silhouette, in quality, in the unspoken grammar of taste. "They notice the details: the fall of a fabric, the cut of a silhouette, even the way we finish our inner linings and incorporate our signature haathi logo."
He still wants guidance, Dongre adds, but he brings something to the table now that wasn't there before: instinct. "Our role is to take that instinct and translate it into something beautifully made, individual and timeless."
Nowhere is that philosophy more visible than in the house's Pichhwai work - the intricate, hand-painted textile tradition Dongre first wove into womenswear before bringing it, in 2019, into menswear. In womenswear, the house had already begun reinterpreting Pichhwai's traditional design language, moving beyond devotion to a deity toward a broader reverence for nature, animal life and forests , and those hand-painted lehengas and dresses had become a signature all their own. Bringing that artistry to men, Dongre says, was simply the next logical step. "Women who loved wearing these pieces wanted their partners to experience the same luxury and beauty of something painted entirely by hand," she says. "There is something special about wearing a story." Over the years, Pichhwai has continued to evolve across the house's collections while remaining unmistakably its own.
That same reverence for craft shows up in her enthusiasm for Benarasi weaving, a genuinely collaborative practice every textile developed alongside master weavers, new motifs evolved without compromising the integrity of the form. She's equally drawn, these days, to handwoven textures and lighter natural fabrics that let comfort and sophistication sit side by side. This year's menswear line leans into that with what she calls easy occasion wear. It is soft, has quiet colourways and is paired with the strong geometric bones native to the Benaras loom.
Ask Dongre to describe her ideal customer and she doesn't reach for superlatives. "The Anita Dongre man is confident, thoughtful and quietly elegant," she says. "He sees less as more, he appreciates craftsmanship but never feels the need to overstate it." It's a philosophy that, in her telling, doesn't diverge from how she designs for women. The values are identical, rooted in craft and built to outlast trend cycles. "Menswear is often about refinement and restraint, allowing the details to speak softly."
That restraint extends to how she thinks about longevity ; not as a marketing word, but as a design constraint. Few grooms buy their wedding outfit thinking about the next time they'll wear it. Yet the most successful pieces, in her experience, are built to have a second life , particularly, beyond the traditional sherwani. She's seen grooms return years later, asking to have a wedding outfit reworked into a bandhgala jacket, a small act of tailoring that lets something deeply personal keep living in a wardrobe well past the wedding season. For her, that versatility comes down to timeless silhouettes, considered separates and embroidery restrained enough not to overwhelm the garment. "Luxury should endure," she says, "not just in how something is made, but in how long it remains loved and relevant."
It's the same instinct behind Rewild, the design philosophy running quietly beneath the house's menswear , an attempt to hold craft, nature and conscious design in balance. In menswear it shows up less loudly than it might in a print-heavy lehenga: in textiles developed from scratch, in motifs borrowed from the natural world, in a process that tries to respect both maker and material. "It is a quieter expression of the same values," she says.
When I asked her, what sustainability means to her, she returned to longevity. "A groom's outfit should be something he treasures and wears again, not something that lives in a wardrobe after one day." The real challenge, she admits, is holding two things at once , the specificity an occasion demands and the versatility real life requires. Thoughtful design, she believes, is what lets both survive in the same garment.
"The modern groom is embracing individuality," she says, "and I believe that confidence will continue to shape the category."
Finally, her advice to a man dressing for his own wedding is, fittingly, less about rules and more about instinct. "Experimenting with fashion is what allows you to develop an editorial eye," she says. "Choose pieces that feel authentic to you trust your own eye."