In Paris' 8th Arondissement, Couturier Gaurav Gupta’s Aspirations Find A New, Permanent Home

No amount of elaborate essays and historical deep dives can hold a candle to the place Paris holds in the fashion industry. It’s so deeply rooted in fashion history that even when you are a stalwart like Gaurav Gupta, dreaming of a flagship store in the city of love can be a humbling experience of its own. 

And so when the Indian couturier finally opened his first store in Paris on Monday, it was no less than a childhood dream come true. “Paris has been a dream of mine for a very long time,” he reminisces. “I remember coming here in the early years of my career and feeling the weight of everything this city represented. So much of fashion history has been written here, and I always wondered what it would mean for our work to exist within that world.”

The 300-square-metre salon is located at 6 Rue Jean Goujon in the 8th arrondissement, Paris’ ‘Golden Triangle’, as it is called. It is a 1930 building designed by French architect Charles Lemaresquier, and will be led by Jean-Paul Cornut, previously the Haute Couture Director at Elie Saab.

Gupta is no stranger to Paris. His show, Shunya, which he presented in Paris for the Spring/Summer ‘23 season, almost made him synonymous with Indian couture in the West. But what was more important to him was to have a permanent home for Indian couture in the city, to give it a place to live and breathe and grow into an entity of its own, independent of a fashion week schedule. 

You see this urge written into every corner of the store. Indian craftsmanship, artworks and furniture personally designed by Gupta find their place in the 300-square-metre space. It’s appointment-only, so that every piece of fabric that exits the store gets the time and attention it rightfully deserves. “There is so much that happens between an idea and the final garment,” says Gupta, “and I think the relationship with the person wearing it should have that same time and attention.”

For four years Paris has watched Gaurav Gupta arrive for Couture Week and leave when the lights came down. The salon at 6 Rue Jean Goujon ends this routine. Gupta is now the first of three Indian designers on the official Haute Couture calendar to put down a permanent address in the city. Whether the others follow will say plenty about who Paris believes can write the next chapter of couture. Gupta, for his part, has already moved in.