Picture Kerala at first light. Mist lifts off the water, coconut palms lean over the canal as if listening, and a wooden boat slides through the green without a sound. That is the scene Masaba Gupta has stitched into The Masaba Man, her Festive ‘26 menswear edit, and it begins with a single illustration, gold-embroidered palms ringed in a circle, a vallam resting at their feet, and the word “Masaba” written in Malayalam script.

The line the house chose says it plainly, he rows through tradition and steers his own course.

Kerala’s spirit is carried in every stitch, and Masaba lets the landscape set the palette. The Ivory Backwater Postcard Kurta Set is the heart of it, a name that reads like a letter sent from a houseboat. Ivory is the colour of temple lamps, kasavu borders and the glare of noon on still water, and it is worn here the way Keralites wear it, calm and unfussy. The motifs that follow feel gathered on the journey, palms, boats and the soft geometry of a postcard from the coast.

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Then comes the mundu, the most Kerala garment of all, worn with confidence rather than reverence. Masaba does not turn it into costume. She lets it stay what it has always been, easy, cool and made for humid evenings, and then adds the surprises that make it hers. A football glitters with her signature motifs, a nod to a state that loves the game as much as it loves its festivals. Kolhapuri chappals ground the look, a small Maharashtrian wink in the middle of all that green.

The internet noticed at once. Some admired the Malayalam lettering, others called the styling “Trivandrum coded,” and one commenter confessed they never thought Masaba could do the Kerala style, then called it genius. A few stumbled over the name of the garment itself, and one gently corrected the rest: it’s mundu.

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That, perhaps, is the charm of the collection. It treats a region not as a theme to be borrowed but as a place worth learning properly, down to the script and the drape.

The collection is available at House of Masaba stores and online.