When a runway just wouldn’t do, Cord put up a musical

By the time I reached Kamani Auditorium for Cord Studio’s first-ever fashion presentation, there was already a queue outside. This was unusual for a Delhi fashion event, where arriving on time is often an act of optimism. Here, though, people seemed genuinely eager to get in. Cord had created a little ticketing booth outside the auditorium, designed to resemble an old-time cinema counter, complete with paper tickets. There was a little bit of school annual function energy in the room as people found their seats and waited for the show to begin. You could almost imagine the teachers backstage doing a final headcount.

The presentation, imagined by Cord and brought to life by theatre collective Crow, was a nearly hour-long musical centred on a young girl, played brilliantly by Elaeh Lecacheux, searching for her missing seamstress mother. The dolls her mother made for her come to life and accompany her on the journey, which unfolds across a series of fantastical worlds. There’s the Time Weaver in a bustling marketplace filled with tarot readers, fortune tellers, and carts serving nostalgic treats like cream rolls, before the story opens out into an enchanted forest and eventually towards its final twists and turns.

The characters themselves were all dressed in Cord. The fashion bit was woven through it all, with the characters and models moving between the narrative and runway moments, so the clothes became part of the world rather than a separate presentation.

That the show made us all think of childhood imagination is something that Cord’s founders had been interested in all along. “Our goal is to keep that child alive and sort of keep that imagination going irrespective of the logical world that we now see and come across,” founder Neha Singh said.

The collection stayed largely unisex, with relaxed, easy silhouettes appearing across patterned trousers, quilted and textured jackets, loose shirts, shorts, and coats. Cord’s familiar landscape prints showed up alongside checks, florals, and layered motifs, while embroidery, appliqué, bows, and other bits of handwork gave the clothes their more playful finish. There was plenty of colour too, from dusty pinks and mustard to greens, blues, and earthy browns, with oversized proportions and unexpected combinations keeping the styling feeling distinctly Cord. Some pieces also reworked scraps from the brand’s old prints into new fabric, bringing a bit of its own history into the collection.

For Pranav Guglani and Singh, who started Cord together back in 2015, this show also marked a new stage for a label that has spent years expressing itself through campaigns. The early years were about getting the business on its feet. “We were very much focused on getting our feet on the ground and establishing a solid business, making sure that our retail stores are in place, making sure our online business are in place,” said Guglani. “And we just lost ourselves in that business.”

Earlier this year came ‘Album ’91’, their nostalgic take on Indian summer holidays and train journeys, complete with A.H. Wheeler bookstalls, station weighing machines, and all the little details of childhood. On social media, the campaign was reposted, discussed, and dissected far beyond the label’s usual audience. “It was very reassuring for us, [that] whatever we were doing is well accepted,” Guglani added. “It really feels like now the world is ready for us, and we are definitely ready to put ourselves out there.”

That is also why a regular runway probably wouldn’t have been enough. “We wanted that thing to come alive,” Singh explained. “We wanted people to experience and sort of immerse in that completely through sound and design and story.” And for nearly an hour, Kamani got exactly that.