Ashish N Soni on re-engineering menswear, fluid silhouettes, and why he dislikes baggy streetwear

At Lakmé Fashion Week at the Taj Palace in New Delhi, heritage textile manufacturer Arvind Limited partnered with designer Ashish N Soni for a collaborative menswear collection. With actor Jim Sarbh walking as showstopper, the showcase focused on functional, crease-resistant tailoring and drape-heavy silhouettes designed to go straight from the runway to The Arvind Stores nationwide for the festive season.

For Soni, whose bespoke repertoire spans more than three decades, the design process for this showcase began at the source rather than the sketchpad. "When we're normally making a collection, it could work in two, three ways: you might have an idea which inspires you, from there you think of a concept, go into sketching, and then think of form," Soni shared.

"Here, I had the opportunity to actually spend time in their factory and sort of start with form. So I was actually at the beginning totally blown away, because I had access to almost—I don't know, a thousand, maybe more odd swatches."

Confronted with that sheer volume of material, Soni found that the core challenge lay in curating an edit that spotlighted lesser-known facets of Arvind's industrial capabilities. "I think the first thing was to be able to show restraint, and to be able to highlight what they do best, and also to highlight a lot of things that Arvind makes that people didn't know about," Soni explained.

"Everybody knows about the quality of cotton and the linen that they produce, but like I mentioned, they do some amazing Tencel. They were all—the kurtas that you saw inside were all made out of bamboo. And what I was wanting to highlight was the luxury element: the kind of wools that are used. There are hardly any competitors that they have in India that produce that kind of wool."

Working under strict timelines required a decisive editorial eye rooted in commercial realism. "Because we had lesser time, that's how it worked," Soni noted. "It was my experience of over three decades to be able to edit their vast depths of fabric to put out what's relevant today, in terms of fashion, relevant in terms of entire India. We are taking this into a commercial collection which will be retailing, starting during the festive season across the country in their stores."

To make that retail transition seamless, the garments had to perform across varied geographies and climates without buckling under maintenance demands. "So the whole thought process was: they need to be weather-friendly, they need to work across the Northeast, Southwest, and more than anything else, should be easy to manufacture and there shouldn't be labour-intensive," Soni pointed out.

"So there'll be a lot of training processes that I'll go through where I'll have to actually impart knowledge into a lot of their technical skills."

Bridging runway drama with rack-ready functionality remained central to the collection’s philosophy. Soni was intentional about crafting clothes that resist rigid compartmentalisation.

"When Arvind and myself sat down and said in terms of how will we take this to the common man and how will we get it out to people, the thought was very clear: that they have to be clothes that are relatable, so they have to be clothes that are functional and comfortable," he said.

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"First priority was on quality, and second was on style. Also remember, the audience is very exposed. They know what's happening in the world. So the trend element and the composition of style has to be there. So the idea was: okay, even if it's simple, nice pieces, let's style them in a contemporary way which the audience would prefer."

On the runway, high styling took centre stage, but broken down into separates, the garments were engineered for universal wearability. "I think styling comes in where you can over-style that or trend-style that for the runway, but when you break it up onto a rack, there are pieces for everybody here in this room," Soni elaborated.

"And there are pieces where I wanted to remove the concept of gender. So there were pieces that—men, women—there was no age group or gender differentiation. So that was one of my key thought processes: that the pieces should speak for themselves and should be very easy to wear, softly tailored, and extremely comfortable."

That ease was reflected in the silhouettes that walked out—draped kurtas cut in soft, fluid Tencels, alongside high-performance, crease-resistant suiting. "One of the key things we did was the drape kurtas, which were in soft fabrics and Tencels," Soni highlighted.

"Then, there were a lot of crush-free things that we were doing, which were out of the performance fabrics, where there's either two-way stretch or four-way stretch, where you could cut a suit really slim, but you could travel in that jacket. You could sleep in it, and nothing would happen. You could take a nine-hour flight, land somewhere, and you look absolutely brand new. And the third was, of course, their high-end range for occasion wear, because as you know, that is India's biggest market."

When the conversation turned to the wider landscape of menswear trends, Soni was quick to praise the departure from restrictive tailoring, expressing relief at the death of skinny trousers. "The fact that the trousers have become looser," he said when asked about what he currently likes. "Because for me, it's always about comfort before anything else. Also, I never liked the concept of slim-fit drainpipes."

Yet, Soni remains fiercely defensive of the tailor’s craft, drawing a firm line when silhouette swallows form entirely. When asked about the one trend he simply cannot get behind, his verdict was immediate: "Baggy and oversized clothing, which means it doesn't matter whether you're a good tailor or a bad tailor—nothing will show."

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