A mother-daughter wardrobe that could be an archive of Indian fashion

Walking into the Tahiliani Parikh home in Mumbai, you can immediately tell this is a family that appreciates nice things—objects with history, design that’s resistant to time. There’s an antique pichwai on the wall, family photos, a few contemporary artworks, and solid-wood modernist furniture. Nothing’s disposable, apart from the flowers in a vase.

“You’re going to have to do five stories to cover everything, we have such a khazana,” says Tina Tahiliani Parikh, as we stand above a bed that’s strewn with saris. Among the lot there is an iridescent metallic sari from Hemang Agarwal, a more simple cotton one by Rta Kapur Chishti, a red checked Akaaro, and a multicoloured striped chiffon sari by none other than her older brother, designer Tarun Tahiliani. It’s a veritable treasure trove of textiles.

“And she tells me I have to clean out my closet,” says her 27-year-old daughter, Aria Parikh, with a laugh. “She has a wardrobe in every room of the house, but my one closet is a problem.”

“It would just make it easier to find things,” insists Tina with an exasperated sigh and a smile.

We’re here to talk about the pair’s impeccable style, and our conversation is peppered with this easy banter, teasing but also gently encouraging, that speaks to the closeness of their relationship. Tina is tall, with her signature long bob, while Aria is petite with a curtain of long, straight hair. The two check in to see if we want anything. Lemonade? Cut fruit? “This is a Gujarati household—we make great cold coffee,” says Aria encouragingly.

The pair hurry out to finish getting ready for our shoot; Aria has already promised to do her mother’s makeup. They sit comfortably on the sofa with their feet up, and while Aria is applying eyeshadow, we keep chatting, covering everything from the origins of Ensemble and their vision for its future to what they’re wearing right now. Tina has changed from a péro kurta to a swooping shirtdress by Injiri (“It’s extraordinary; I wear her clothes for years”) in her preferred palette of earth tones and slippers by Janota Goa. Aria is in a cropped shirt and a pair of high-waisted Lovebirds trousers, her mother’s originally, that have been altered to fit her petite frame, which she swaps for a lungi-esque skirt by Divyam Mehta.  

It’s a fitting choice of attire given that Tina is the executive director of Ensemble, one of the country’s most established multi-designer stores and the earliest retailer of homegrown fashion, founded in 1987 by her brother Tarun Tahiliani and his wife Sailaja. Tina took over the reins in 1990, when Tarun went to study at FIT, New York, and returned determined to start his own label.

Aria joined the family business more recently in 2020, after graduating from Swarthmore College with a degree in Psychology. “I was actually categorically dissuaded from going to fashion school by my mother and uncle [Tarun]. My mom always says that the designers were her real fashion school,” says Aria.

“I think it’s important for a store like Ensemble to help people find their personal style. And that’s really what it did for me,” says Tina about her sartorial journey. The younger of the two Tahiliani siblings, Tina grew up wanting to be an engineer, following in the footsteps of her mother, although she spent time as a financial analyst in the States before joining the boutique. “Tarun was always the creative one and I was the nerd who did well at things like maths and physics. Even after I started working at Ensemble, it took me 15 years to realise that I loved the job and that I was actually good at it.” It’s a surprising statement coming from a woman who seems to so easily embody everything that Ensemble is about.

Her education in fashion progressed gradually. It started with a trousseau of eight saris from eight different parts of the country that she received from her mother-in-law. “And that’s when my heart started opening to what this country had to offer,” she reveals. It was followed by interactions with designers like Rajesh Pratap Singh, whose first collection they stocked at the store (“He did the most divine pintucks. A shipment would come to Ensemble, and I would immediately buy, like, eight pieces”). She came upon Rohit Bal’s embroidered boleros (“extraordinary”) and Raghavendra Rathore’s tailored womenswear. One of her earliest big designer purchases was a bandhani abha, or jacket, by Ahmedabad-based designer Asha Sarabhai, who was a close collaborator of Issey Miyake and largely only retailed her designs abroad before she began stocking at the Mumbai boutique.

“Another big thing that impacted my personal style were Tarun’s chiffon sarees, which he paired with beautiful fluted blouses. They were just super-chic. They were like India’s answer to a black-tie gown and, in a way, they’re almost sexier,” she says. The result is a bountiful collection of saris accumulated over the years. The latest addition is an impossibly soft sindoor-red Shikargah silk sari by a young Hyderabad-based designer named Sourav Das that she has rushed over for our shoot from the shelves of the store. Now that’s a special delivery every fashion girl dreams of.

The biggest beneficiary of this collection is, of course, Aria. One of the joys of raising a daughter is having someone to shop for, something that Tina took advantage of early on. “I have things in my closet that my mother bought when I was maybe 12 years old just because they were beautiful, even if I couldn’t wear them then,” says Aria. These include an Anamika Khanna look she received when she was still in school. “I actually wore it to the opening of our Ahmedabad store last year, and people were so intrigued that it was maybe almost 15 years old,” she recalls. There’s also a slinky Savio Jon dress that she is yet to wear, plenty of saris handed down from the women in the family, and, naturally, plenty of Tarun Tahiliani, which serves as the backbone of it all. But what’s the one piece in her mother’s closet that she always has her eyes on? A black wool coat from Shahab Durazi that her mother refuses to let her alter just yet. “You’ll grow into it,” says Tina with an eye roll.

But growing up, it wasn’t all designer clothing and custom-made Tarun Tahiliani frocks. “My husband [Vinay Parikh] was a real stickler for making sure the kids never felt like they were entitled to fashion,” says Tina. But there were moments of fashionable celebration that Aria recalls, especially when she was younger. “At least until my eighth birthday, it was amazing. I could just say I want a fairy-themed party and then suddenly there would be a pink dress with wings.”

Nevertheless, theirs was still a house where designers, photographers, models, and journalists were frequent visitors, where the dinner-table conversation could be about Ensemble’s upcoming fashion show or her uncle’s next big collection. “The biggest privilege of my life is probably growing up the way I did,” says Aria.

“She’s building her own nice wardrobe of contemporary wear,” says Tina when I ask them to describe each other’s style. “I think because she’s younger she’s able to see things in a fresher way and experiment a bit more, especially when it comes to styling.” She recalls when Aria dressed her for a Business of Fashion dinner. “I was wearing an OTT Tarun Tahiliani bomber jacket with pants and then she pushed me to wear a satlada, one of those multi-strand necklaces, with it. It was something that I have only ever worn with Indian clothes before.” Aria leans in to add, “At the end of the day, I’m still a classics girl, though. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

In many ways, the two share a similar approach to style. They prioritise everything that’s cool and comfortable. A little sexy, a lot India-inspired. They eschew fast fashion, trends, and definitely anything covered in logos. The same applies to their accessories. Between the two, they list some of the bags in Tina’s closet. There’s a little Celine sling, one bag each from Givenchy and Stella McCartney, a new mini bag from Umber PostPast, a brand they discovered on a recent holiday to Korea. “But the bag you are using right now is a Tod’s that I swear you bought when I was five years old,” Aria points out. “There are people who have 500 pairs of high heels or a wall of handbags…but that’s not me or you either,” adds Tina. 

The pair then rapidly start listing their favourite jewellery brands—Kesya Jaipur, Inca, Metallurgy, Hanut Singh—it’s like watching a rapid tennis rally, the ball bouncing from one to the other without dropping.

The synchronicity will come in handy as they plan next moves for Ensemble, which turns 38 this year and recently opened its 10th store in Gurgaon. “We’re at such an interesting place in fashion right now,” says Aria. “My mom talks about how the industry used to be this wild and creative space when she first started. I want to bring back some of that excitement.”