Delhi-based fashion designer Divyam Mehta’s new collection Still Waters
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
With deliberate, calculated precision, Delhi-based fashion designer Divyam Mehta defines the inspiration behind his newly launched summer collection Still Waters. He borrows the collection’s design language from South Asian contemporary art, tribal rugs and nautical stripes, but manipulates its grammar to create mundu skirts, oversized jackets paired with dresses, gilets, pyjama trousers, tops and layered tunics. “For the moodboard,” he explains, “we were mainly looking at modern art from Cambodia, Indonesia and South India, but these inspirations have been manipulated and edited to create something abstract, simple, bold and contemporary. Take, for example, South-Indian mundus. We made versions of that for our skirts, teaming them with tops”.
Delhi-based fashion designer Divyam Mehta
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Special arrangement
Design diary
Detailing on how this experimentation extends to chiffon gilets and toys with traditional drapes or crafts, Divyam, who launched his first menswear line in 2009 and his first women’s collection at the Wills India Fashion Week in 2010, navigates the modern-meets-traditional territory through his creations. With the kantha stitch as a trusted companion, Divyam’s muse for Still Waters is the pace, poise and peace of quaint, small towns across South Asia. The collection, made over six months (from September 2024 to February 2025), was conceived in Kerala. “I visited South India last year for rejuvenation, ayurveda, and was enamoured by the beauty of the States. We, in fact, shot the campaign at Fort Kochi because it has that quintessential charm of a small town with cobbled streets, beautiful backwaters,” shares Divyam.
The collection’s campaign was shot at Fort Kochi
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Crafting drapes
The edit champions textiles like silks (mulberry silk) from South India; linen, cotton and matka silk from West Bengal; and silk blends from Gujarat. Divyam’s brand has tied up with several crafts clusters across India. The label has a manufacturing-unit-cum-studio comprising a team of nealy 100 craftspersons, tailors and managers in Noida, Delhi, and an outlet in the city’s Defence Colony. “Our weaves and kantha work is from Phulia in West Bengal. We also work with some craft clusters in Kutch and Kumaon division in Uttrakhand from where we procure silk and cotton weaves,” he shares. Divyam has also used Kerala’s cotton handloom in his new collection. “We developed some textiles in collaboration with social impact organisation Save The Loom that’s been working with weavers in Kerala to revive and reform the handloom sector. Finding new idioms to traditional textiles is challenging and a process we love as a brand,” he adds.
The collection’s colour palette has a splash of pink sand, dull-black coal, ivory and sand
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Special arrangement
About the colours of Still Waters, one would imagine them to share some proximity with the water element; perhaps, tones of blue. But Divyam surprises with a splash of pink sand, dull-black coal, ivory, and sand. The colour blue comes through only in select denim pieces of the collection, but the turmeric yellow used as an accent in many of the garments tenders a certain edge to the edit. “We have also used ikat in this collection; the weave is procured from Hyderabad. I, however, have always incorporated kantha in most of my collections because it adds texture and weight to the silhouette,” says Divyam.
The colour blue comes through only in select denim pieces of the collection
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement
For now, Divyam is working on the brand’s autumn-winter 2025 edit, along with a collaborative project with pashmina weavers of Kashmir.
Still Waters comprises 45 styles and the garments start at ₹15,000 on divyammehta.com.
Published – March 28, 2025 04:45 pm IST
