Amit Aggarwal has built a distinctive design language by bringing together science, structure, Indian craft and an instinct for experimentation — transforming materials and traditions into fashion that seems to exist somewhere between clothing and art.
By Nichola Marie
For Amit Aggarwal, fashion has never been simply about clothes. Growing up in a family of engineers and scientists, he developed an early fascination with form, structure and the workings of the world around him. That interest would eventually find its way into his fashion vocabulary, where architecture, science, nature and fantasy coexist with Indian craftsmanship. Today, Aggarwal is recognised for a design language that is unmistakably his own: sculptural yet fluid, futuristic yet rooted in tradition, and experimental without losing sight of the human form.
The Making Of A Designer
His journey began at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, where he graduated in 1999 with multiple awards. His graduation show also changed the course of his career when designer Tarun Tahiliani, who was a judge, noticed his work. Aggarwal went on to work with Tahiliani, choosing the opportunity to learn from one of India’s leading couturiers over pursuing a postgraduate course at London’s Central Saint Martins. The experience gave him an invaluable grounding in draping, construction and the workings of a fashion house.
His early independent work under the label Morphe established his interest in transforming raw influences into contemporary clothing. But it was with his eponymous label that Aggarwal began to develop the vocabulary that would become his signature. Founded in 2012, the house has grown from a close-knit team of 15 into an organisation of more than 400 people, with stores and retail presence in India and international markets.
Where Material Meets Imagination
What distinguishes Aggarwal is the way he thinks about material. Fabric, in his world, is rarely just fabric. Polymers, recycled materials, metallic elements, glass fibre, rubber cording and unconventional textiles can be manipulated, engineered and reinterpreted until they acquire an entirely new character. His collections often involve lengthy experimentation and collaboration between artisans, technicians and the design team. As he explained recently, some of his earliest experiments involved processes that were untested in fashion and required repeated failures before they worked. What remained was an enduring lesson: to understand material “as a system.”
That approach has produced clothes that seem to challenge the conventional boundaries between fashion and sculpture. His brand describes its aesthetic as one inspired by natural forms and articulated through distinctive silhouettes, with garments that combine femininity and structural movement. Its design vocabulary draws equally from organic forms and industrial processes, resulting in clothing that can appear weightless even when its construction is remarkably complex.
The Science Of Design
Science, meanwhile, is more than a childhood influence. It has become a recurring conceptual tool. Aggarwal’s collections have explored ideas of time, molecular structures, evolution, light and the invisible forces that shape the natural world. ANTEVORTA, for instance, examined time through philosophy, mythology, religion, science and cosmology, while ARCANUM explored what the designer calls the “invisible architecture of life.”
Yet for all its futuristic quality, the work remains deeply connected to India. This relationship with craft is not based on reproducing tradition exactly as it exists. Instead, Aggarwal treats inherited techniques and materials as starting points for experimentation. His design philosophy speaks of evolution as the act of looking at traditions as a spiritual core while contemporising them for future generations.
That philosophy comes alive in EMERIS | COUTURE ’26, his latest couture collection. Its starting point was an unlikely object: a two-decade-old Chikankari sari, embroidered by artisans on delicate chiffon with a single silk thread. Rather than treating the sari as an artefact to be preserved, Aggarwal used its delicate geometry and openness as the basis for a new material language, translating the traditional jaal into rubber cord, recycled glass, handformed beads and intricate lacework. Biomimicry and parametric thinking further transform embroidery into light, texture and form.
The first expression of this exploration was created for and worn by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, bringing Chikankari into a contemporary, global context. From there, the language became part of EMERIS: a study in how something deeply inherited can continue to transform without losing its essence.
“At Amit Aggarwal, continuity is not about preserving craft exactly as it was, but allowing it to move forward, carrying its knowledge into a new material and visual language,” he says. It is perhaps the simplest explanation of his design philosophy: heritage is not a fixed point but a material with which to create the future.
From Couture To Everyday
The same instinct is visible in AM:IT, his contemporary prêt line, which has recently been relaunched to bring his design language into everyday life. The challenge, Aggarwal says, was not to make his work less complex but to distil it. Couture’s sculptural thinking, surface development and layering have been translated into clothing designed around versatility, comfort and movement.
The latest AM:IT campaign, shot in Sri Lanka, offers another example of this way of seeing. Architecture, weaving, cane and palm-leaf craft, temple details, colonial tiles, fishing nets and Geoffrey Bawa’s celebrated use of lattice, light and shadow became visual and material references. The resulting collection translates the island’s geometry, colour and movement into woven textiles and relaxed silhouettes.
It is this constant process of translation that has come to define Aggarwal’s work. He sees something — a scientific principle, a natural phenomenon, a building, an old textile, a craft technique — and asks what else it might become.
Fashion As Feeling
His philosophy is perhaps best summed up by his own definition of couture: “Couture for me is a feeling. When you wear an outfit that you feel absolutely embodies your spirit and aesthetic, that’s what I would consider couture.”
For Aggarwal, then, the future of Indian fashion does not lie in choosing between heritage and innovation. It lies in making the two interact. His achievement has been to build a fashion house where the past can be dismantled, reassembled and given another life — where a centuries-old craft can meet recycled glass, where architecture can become embroidery, where science can become silhouette, and where clothing can become a form of moving art.
