Aisha Rao's collection at ICW is a love letter to every story that taught us to love

Aisha Rao unveiled Priyasi at India Couture Week 2026, building the collection around longing, union and remembrance. She opened about it in an exclusive interview with India Today.Aisha Rao showcased her collection Priyasi at India Couture Week 2026.Long before we learn to tell our own love stories, we inherit someone else's. Shah Jahan's devotion. Salim and Anarkali's forbidden longing. The slow-burn restraint of Pride and Prejudice. The sweeping heartbreak of Anna Karenina. Even, further back still, Adam and Eve. Different centuries, different worlds — yet somehow, the same ache.It's this thread that couturier Aisha Rao pulled at for her latest collection, Priyasi, showcased in association with Nexxus New York, an FDCI initiative, at Hyundai India Couture Week 2026. Rather than restaging these familiar tales, Rao used them as emotional scaffolding — building a collection around three states every love story eventually passes through: Longing, Union, and Remembrance.The space had been transformed into a sculptural field of three towering tulips - a flower that has carried the language of love across cultures for centuries – each representing an emotional state. Layered lighting, a cinematic score, and a live performance blurred the line between spectacle and story, asking the audience to feel their way through the collection rather than simply watch it.True to Rao's design vocabulary, Priyasi was built on dense embroidery, polychromatic applique, and layers upon layers of craftsmanship — silhouettes that moved fluidly between archival reference and something distinctly current. Botanical motifs and richly textured, sculptural surfaces gave the three emotional chapters their visual form. Aisha Rao's Priyasi transformed timeless narratives into contemporary couture. The season also pushed further into what the label calls "purposeful luxury," with two new bio-based materials — bio-resham and bio-badla — folded into the collection's fabric library, alongside the house's now-signature use of applique built from atelier waste.The collection's world extended beyond clothing, too. In partnership with Shree Jewellers, Rao unveiled a fine jewellery line she designed herself as a direct continuation of Priyasi — each piece carrying forward the same visual language through detailed work and carefully placed coloured stones. In an exclusive interaction with India Today Digital following the showcase, Aisha Rao spoke about her approach to sustainable fabric innovation, her lifelong pull toward romance, and the idea she hopes audiences carry home from Priyasi.On why she calls it "purposeful luxury" rather than sustainability:"We endeavour each season to create purposeful luxury. Because we deal with so many different kinds of fabrics — we do a pret line, we do an India Modern line, we work with yarns, we work with dobbies — and when you have that kind of inventory, and applique as our signature, I wanted to build something without calling it a zero-waste ideology, because I didn't want it to sound like greenwashing. I collect every piece of waste every season in the atelier, spread it out, and we try to innovate with what we can do." The designer's collection was a step towards "purposeful luxury", with biofabric innovations developed in your atelier. This season, that process produced three new fabrics — bio-katran, bio-badla, and bio-resham. "All the resham in our factory is collected, washed, put on a water-soluble paper, and we weave it into a fabric. All the badla, we do the same. And all the katran — whatever you see — you'll actually see it when I show it to you. You can't tell from this."Her comparison for the approach: a certain electric car brand. "We want it to be like Tesla. We don't advertise that it's electric. It's just a beautiful design. So people have to buy it for the design, not for the sustainability of it."When asked if her clients are receptive to sustainable fashion, this is what she said, "Some are, some may not be. It has to be about the design. They should be emotionally bound to the design, and sustainability should be part of that story."On romance, and the stories she keeps returning to:"I'm a sucker for romance. I have always been an incurable romantic. I time and again go back to Pride and Prejudice and all of Hindi cinema. Jodha Akbar — it's embarrassing how often I watch it, but I do."On the collection's most talked-about moment — three women walking together, bound by braids:"We wanted to display union. We wanted to display being bound by something. We were trying to find a beautiful way of doing that, and I felt like being bound by the head was a very cool concept of showing union. We took inspiration from the Mughal era — if you see, the embroideries are very Mughal. The caps are very Russian cap-inspired. If you see Anna Karenina, it's a total fusion of different concepts."On what she wants audiences to take away, if Priyasi were a film:"Life seems very fragmented and fractured, but hold on to this ever-powering emotion called love. It really endures. Believe in it — it will show you life."- EndsPublished By: Tiasa Bhowal Published On: Jul 31, 2026 15:47 IST