Namaste Milano! Dhruv Kapoor brings RCB, beadwork and all to fashion week

Dhruv Kapoor's Milan homecoming this season was a masterclass in unhurried beauty, a brand that's clearly stopped chasing the next thing and started noticing the thing that's already here. Titled Presence, the SS27 collection was on three pillars- awareness, transformation, continuity and it showed, in every faded print and creeper-embroidered seam on the runway.

Kapoor's relationship with Milan runs deep, Delhi-born, trained at Istituto Marangoni, cut his teeth at Etro before starting his own house in 2013 and this collection felt like the confidence of someone who's stopped performing for the city and started genuinely living in it.

The premise was almost meditative at the pace we all move today, chasing project after project, goal after goal, we start wanting what the system tells us to want than what we actually desire. So Presence hit pause, just enough to notice how colour fades, how fabric ages, how bodies and memory change shape over time.

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That philosophy played out as pure contradiction on the runway, soft against structured, utility against ornament, oversized against precise, long against cropped, nothing was allowed to sit in one lane.

Prints looked sun-bleached and moss-covered, like weathered wood or old photographs; embroidery crept across garments in stems and tendrils like something still growing. Materials were pushed to misbehave, bonded silks, crumpled checks, pebbled and rippled leather engineered to look decades old while being brand new, mixed laces, buttered poplins, frayed appliqués, faded denim.

Even the foundational pieces from SS26 returned, but visibly lived-in, carrying a season's worth of wear like an old friend. And the sari, dhoti and lungi were reworked as construction, their wrapping and layering logic reconstructed into new proportions.

The standout: a beaded Madras lungi that took twenty-one punishing days to hand-craft. Bellissimo doesn't even cover it.

Accessories kept the same thread going, the ‘Constant’ trunk was joined by an oversized vanity pouch in crumpled, bonded and hand-embroidered versions, the brand's signature Mary Jane got a square toe and a tasselled-mule evolution, and thong sandals with leather straps borrowed straight from the ease of Indian footwear.

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But the moment that had every desi in the room (and every desi doomscrolling Instagram) sit up was Puma x RCB x Dhruv Kapoor, a capsule of upcycled bomber jackets rebuilt in his signature graphic language with generous hand-beading.

Cricket has always been fashionable in spirit, but rarely given this level of craft, proof that a brand willing to put 1.4 billion people's biggest obsession on a Milan runway, beadwork and all, is playing a different game entirely. Word is the SPAM archive folks had a hint of this brewing over the summer, obviously, but watching it materialise fully was worth the wait.

The collaborations didn't stop there. Sennes by the House of Senco brought lab-grown diamonds into the jewellery, while Helsinki's Paloceras lent its sculptural eyewear as a sharp, precise counterpoint to all that softness and decay.

Off the runway, the business is scaling deliberately, India remains Kapoor's biggest market thanks to the flagship store, with real momentum building in Japan, Korea and the US, early distribution taking root in China and Brazil, and, per Kapoor himself, an online footprint that already covers the entire map.

Heritage, technology, sport and craft, all folded into one increasingly global, unmistakably Indian house.