A quiet place with Naushad Ali

Around noon on a Thursday afternoon, the otherwise sunny Mariamman Koil Street in Puducherry’s Heritage Town has an island of shade. Half a dozen construction workers mill around a semi-completed concrete structure—a temporary extension of the temple that lends the street its name. Construction spans the entire width of the street, leaving a foot-wide space in front of the homes that flank it. As trowels scrape cement on brick, you angle your shoulders to 45 degrees to enter the studio of apparel designer Naushad Ali.

Inside is another den of activity. In a pillared room with a cool red-oxide flooring, four tailors are bent over sewing machines, a measuring tape straddling each machine. Blue and yellow crates sit next to each workstation, full of garments awaiting work. A dozen tube lights suspended from a ceiling with exposed wooden beams ensure that the room is bright enough to allow one to closely inspect every last stitch and loop. In the far corner are toiles on hangers, while one rack holds finished shirts. To the left is a table where ironed garments come to get their grey-and-white tags attached, next to a few of the brand’s signature ‘Pondichéry’ crochet totes, perfect for this Instagram era. To the right are two framed boards. One is a fabric board of the brand’s 2024 collection, Tranquebar—6x6-inch squares of silk-cotton plaid, block-printed cotton velvet, waffle-weave cotton, and mulberry silk in a palette of ecru, black, red, and navy alongside front-and-back outfit sketches by the designer. The second is occupied by postcard-size lookbook prints of the 2024 men’s and women’s collection.

We say ‘2024 collection’, as there’s just one of those for this Puducherry brand; the concept of spring/summer and fall/winter were long discarded by its creative mind. “We do one collection a year; that was a conscious decision post-Covid,” says Ali as we sit down to chat on the quieter upper floor of the studio. “It aligns with our brand philosophy too—that we’re not making things for a season. The references and aesthetic have also been about classic pieces that last longer. With that as the core idea for the brand, it’s not fair to cater to spring/summer and fall/winter just because it’s the industry norm right now. It’s a consumerist point of view, more retail-oriented. It does not make sense to preach longevity and going beyond seasons and at the same time, neglect certain styles by saying ‘Oh, it’s last season.’”

Set up in 2015, Naushad Ali’s eponymous label is known for well-made, relaxed western separates whose worth is particularly apparent on closer inspection. Fabrics are developed in-house. On a black silk shirt, the embroidery is so fine that it looks tattooed. The designer points out that the artisan did the embroidery without the hoop or frame usually needed to hold the fabric taut—there’s nary a pucker on the fabric. Much experimentation happened before they found a way to ensure block print was rendered on fine silk and even cotton velvet in a way that didn’t make it diffuse around the edges.

In the past, textile craft from Kutch has featured in Ali’s clothing, as have the weaves of Bengal and Chettinad. Hand-spun woven wool from Ladakh, too, is on his mind. “We don’t have a heavy winter market yet, but the moment I tap into that, I’ll definitely go and work with them. But we’ve already been researching them, and travelling to these places. I have 50 boxes of samples,” he reveals.

About his journey, he says, “I was just telling someone recently that I woke up one day and realised I’m not a new brand anymore, but I’m not an established brand either...I’m hanging in the middle, which I find an interesting place to be in. There is still room for experimenting and being flexible to be what we want to be. At the same time, I think we’re out of the phase where we’re seen as a small-town brand doing something cool. I have to be careful. We also need to be consistent. The mindset of the brand, for me, is more about stabilising what we’re taking up.” Through it all, Ali is revelling in working at his own pace. “It’s not a competition with anyone. But of course, there are clear agendas on what we are doing next year and five years from now, and how the brand should be shaped.”

He’s also clear about his choice of residence, Puducherry, as opposed to any big city. The boy from Vellore, who spent his childhood in and out of Puducherry, moved here permanently after school. For the NIFT Chennai graduate, when the time came to set up his label, Puducherry seemed a no-brainer. “I tried working in Delhi and Bengaluru; I couldn’t fit in the city, to be honest,” he recalls.

It’s not that he didn’t anticipate the limitations of the supply-chain logistics that would come from not living in a metropolis. “We don’t even get buttons here. Or threads. We basically bring everything from outside. I knew the challenges involved in this, but I thought, let’s give it five years till we get somewhere. We’ll do something good here.”

That they did. The brand now retails from its flagship stores in Delhi, Bengaluru, and Puducherry, as well as leading multi-brand boutiques across the country and its own online store. It undoubtedly has become a fashion-insider favourite. The biggest change over the years, Ali says, is in the increased legroom. “When we started, we had restrictions in terms of the size of the collection, the fabrics we could use. Since we’re making the fabrics and not buying them, we need to make a minimum 500 metres. As a start-up brand we didn’t have room for all that. But now we do, so I’m using it to the fullest.”

As we speak, Ali is in the middle of preparing to travel to Tokyo for a showcase. The Japanese capital also has a connection to what’s brewing for his 10th-year collection: indigo. Ali recalls the time when indigo featured heavily in his early collections. With black being a hard colour to sell in the Indian market, Ali—then shy about working with colour—turned to indigo as an alternative, as one could work with a spectrum of shades within it. “A lot of people still think I only do that. We were one of the very few brands who did a full, committed indigo collection back then. Even now, it’s a very exciting but difficult dye to work with. But to do a collection entirely with indigo is hard in terms of production.”

With his label’s 10th anniversary next year, indigo beckons again. “Basically, a lot of experiments have been done on that, a lot of techniques. There was a time I was obsessed with that one dye. I would wake up and take my bedsheet and wonder what would happen if I over-dye it. I’d send it to my dyer. My bedsheet would come back dyed. I’d cut it and make something out of it. I wanted to do all those things again. It’s more playful.” In Tokyo, he hopes to visit some of the shibori dyeing houses and hopefully combine that know-how with India’s pre-colonial indigo dyeing traditions and the results of his mad-scientist experiments conducted over the years. 

Ali admires Japanese greats Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo for revolutionising silhouettes, and brands like Isabel Marant for treading the line between creativity and commerce. His design references, though, are often closer to home. “I keep saying I’m a south Indian boy in a south Indian world. I might have gone to Italy twice, but I won’t do a collection on it—that’s a bit silly. It’s always things around me.”

On this floor of his studio, golu idols of various deities take pride of place on one wall. The bookshelf includes tomes like The Secret Lives of Colour, Indian Botanical Art: An Illustrated History, The World Atlas of Wine, and Shoe Dog. There’s a stack of magazines from the last decade—Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar—that have featured the brand. On another table is a vinyl sleeve of Bach’s Concerts de Brandenburg. At the far end, an enclosed terrace makes for a green oasis. There’s also an inordinate number of old-fashioned glass paperweights dotting the space.

The 70-year-old home that houses the studio was formally acquired three days before 2020’s Covid lockdown; with the studio shut and plenty of time on his hands, Ali grabbed a paintbrush and got to work on the walls. His own home in nearby Auroville, too, is an old space that he acquired and just recently renovated, all clean lines, well-loved furniture, raw concrete surfaces, natural light, and the occasional pop of colour. “The idea behind the interiors is to keep it simple with the minimalist aesthetic I believe in. Everything you see in the house or my studio was picked up at different times by me while travelling. It’s a mix of different cultures I am attracted to,” Ali explains. “I always say I was born a bit too late. I love an old-world charm and well-made things passed down generations.”

Speaking of generations, Ali is clear that time away from work is spent with his 13-year-old son, Liam. They play cricket and football and cycle around Auroville. “Work is hectic, but when that is over, I make sure I have a personal life. Even going for a walk in the woods in Auroville is a good part of my routine. And that’s the nicest part of living in a place like this. Why would we choose to live here and not indulge in all these things?”