Akaaro’s new store is an ode to Mumbai

You’ve seen those four-legged concrete structures hunkered down along Mumbai’s Marine Drive, looking like they’re ready to start ambling into town like an army of Pillsbury doughboys from Ghostbusters. As you sit dangling your legs off the promenade, wondering what you’d do if your shoe dropped, you would have spotted the crabs scuttling in and out of these tetrapods’ many nooks like brown pebbles come to life, as wave upon wave crashes against the grey mass and fizzles out. The tetrapods, which form this immovable barrier between the all-conquering sea and frangible land, now get a new setting: the store windows of the newly opened Akaaro flagship store in the city’s Ballard Estate.

Gaurav Jai Gupta, the founder of Akaaro, obviously didn’t lift them off the seafront. Instead, the designer enlisted former colleague Ashish Karmali to take over the store’s inaugural window display.

Karmali came up with the idea of tetrapod-like shapes made using fabric waste from Gupta’s collections over the years—an apt homage to the city that the brand will now call home, and also something that ties in with the brand’s philosophy that nothing should go to waste. (For the same reason, Gupta isn’t a fan of grazing tables.) While Karmali’s forte has been larger-than-life avant-garde sculptural shapes made of textile, he decided to take a different approach this time. “This time we wanted to pay homage to the city, the people, and that’s how we came up with the idea for the tetrapod. They interlock… very much like weaving.”

With this store, the brand joins a host of designer labels that have set up shop in Ballard Estate, or are about to—Tarun Tahiliani, Tilfi, and House of Rose, to name a few.

Founded around 2010, Akaaro has become the sort of IYKYK brand that clothing lovers love. Always drawn to brass tacks, the brand has built a steady following of repeat clientele who appreciate its textile-forward garments that are sans surface ornamentation or print but are never plain. It’s where silk cotton fabric gains magical stretchy pleats before the first stitch falls. Where steel or bamboo could be yarn. Gupta, before anything, is a textile designer, so garments are often conceptualised before the bobbins are loaded, as its silk metallic engineered Chanderi jackets from its latest summer line would attest.

Housed in a 2,000 sqft space on Calicut Road, Akaaro’s first flagship store aims to crystallise in tangible form—and otherwise—everything that the brand stands for. A skylight-lit sweeping space is flanked by racks of clothing that house the label’s latest collection, Moonrise, which came out of yarn waste accumulated over the years, the hard-to-miss Yves Klein blue collection, The Sky Is Mine; the black-and-gold brocades from the metallics line as well as and the more back-to-basics handspun cotton collection...(Fabric waste from many of these collections has been used on the tetrapods in the window display.)

A set of Japanese-inspired calico-and-wood cabinets lit from within house the brand’s silk saris. The calico is repeated in wall panels in the changing room too. “We’ve used calico since we’re on Calicut Street.” (The word ‘calico’ comes from Calicut.)

There’s a loft space with a skylight that’s enough to light up the whole store in daytime. “The skylight is one of the key reasons I took this place,” Gupta adds.

The ceiling still retains the original wooden beams it came with—Mumbai Port Trust regulations bar any major modifications to the place. Look up and there’s a sinister-looking hook jutting from one of the beams, a little character-adding feature. The bare cement flooring, too, has been left untouched.

Everything, from the interiors to the furniture, the upholstery on the daybeds, and the carpets (woven in Panipet), was developed in-house. “One of the briefs I had was that we are a brand that is to the point. It’s not gimmicky. It’s straightforward, it’s strong. The product should speak. We’re not interested in theatrics, we’re not interested in a hundred things. Basically, let’s just cut the crap. I think that’s the future,” says Gupta.

The designer also intends to make music a key “pillar” on which the space rests. Sumer Mehta, who incidentally goes by @harbourdubs on Instagram, has a two-hour set planned for the launch. Gupta’s own playlist oscillates between Fingathing, Krishna Das and Baloch musician Noor Bakhsh.

Fifteen years since the brand’s inception, has Gupta settled on a way to define his brand’s identity? “Around 2015-16, as a brand we went back and we came up with something that we call ‘look within, seek within’. It’s about internalising. I think it’s about textiles obviously. I still do handlooms. I’ve not done prints, I’ve not done embroideries. This is what I find interesting, that what I’ve started with I’m still doing.” Just like the tetrapods, which let the water flow around them, but are somehow secure in the role they have to play.

Address: Akaaro, No 7, Calicut Road, Ballard Estate, Mumbai - 400001