Before Harikrishnan Keezhathil Surendran Pillai, better known as Harri KS became the talk of the internet, he was obsessed with bodybuilding. As a shy college student (he’s still very reserved—the reason why you read such few interviews with him), the gym was his safe space. “I liked that I could just go there and feel good,” says the fashion designer one Saturday afternoon in London, where he currently lives. He still chases the rush of a workout and feel-good factor of being in the gym through his work that plays with the proportions of the body.
Harri (also the name of his eponymous label) made his London Fashion Week debut two years ago where his gravity-defying, inflatable latex trousers, often called balloon pants, caught the attention of the British Fashion Council (BFC). These outlandish trousers became his trademark and led to his selection for the BFC’s NEWGEN initiative that supports emerging talent. Since then, the graduate from London College of Fashion has had a few viral moments in his career, including dressing musician Sam Smith for the Brit Awards last year in a latex suit whose exaggerated form symbolised the singer’s struggles with body dysmorphia and the negative commentary he faced online.
The 30-year-old Indian designer’s own narrative is just as unique as his approach to fashion. “I hated my childhood,” he says, reflecting between sips of coffee. As a student of St Jude High School in Kollam, Kerala, Harri wasn’t a particularly high achiever. While his parents felt the proper thing for him to do was work at a bank, he had his nose firmly in the pages of GQ. “I remember picking up an issue when I was 16 years old and it was the first time I even knew there was such an industry as fashion,” he says.
With his over 6ft built, he initially thought modelling was his calling, but knowing that his parents would never accept this, he applied to NIFT Bengaluru to study fashion design, a decoy to pursue the career he believed was meant for him. It was while working as a model in Bengaluru that he discovered bodybuilding. “I liked that it gave me an excuse not to go out and party, which was something that never interested me,” he says. But Harri’s modelling career was short-lived, he felt the industry was hierarchical and disrespectful of new entrants. “It was a very humiliating experience,” he reveals. For the last six months of his course, before he graduated in 2016, Harri put all his energy into design and got a job with designer Suket Dhir in Delhi, where he worked for over a year.
In hindsight, everything that led to his wide legged debut blowing up on the internet now seems happenstance. While working with Dhir, Harri applied to Central Saint Martins, motivated by his then partner who was moving to London for her postgraduate studies. “I didn’t come here (London) to study. I just came here to accompany her. I had a tough time,” admits Harri, who actually failed his postgraduate course three times. “It was the mentaI strength I developed while bodybuilding that pushed me to keep trying. That’s when I paused and started putting the body at the centre of my work.” He now articulates his feelings towards the body through the sculptural clothes he designs. Although you can see Martin Margiela and Gareth Pugh in his forms, he says creative director, illustrator, and graphic designer Jean-Paul Goude (famous for his Paper cover of Kim Kardashian) has been his true inspiration all along.
Today Harri doesn’t even step into a gym. “What I am doing now needs all my energy,” he says. But he confesses it was bodybuilding that sparked his ingenuity and fostered his unique approach to fashion: “I learned a lot from it. As a bodybuilder, my body was used as a tool to communicate. You need to have discipline and a mind-muscle connection, which takes a lot of focus. In a way, there is a similarity with fashion. You express emotions through a process. While I may not go to the gym anymore, it’s where the core of my creative practice comes from.”
Photograph by Kaj Lehner
Currently, Harri is in the UK on an exceptional talent visa, which gives him a little time to see his label grow globally. He has had a ready-to-wear-line since his first show in 2020 which he wants to build on, capitalising on the virality of his runway-ready, sculptural designs and translating that to more wearable, but equally covetable looks that are also commercially viable. Think ultra-slouchy denim pants, sharp-shouldered wool blazers, and knitwear emblazoned with the silhouette of his now-iconic balloon pants. At the moment, most of his revenue actually comes from working as a costume designer with theatres across Europe. “In reality, I do not know whether I can even sustain this label till September,” he confesses, allowing us a glimpse of the difficulties of nurturing a small business. Yet despite the ups and downs, Harri is clear about his vision, and unfazed by the vagaries of Internet fame. Whether or not he becomes the next global Indian creative the world talks about, we will have to wait and see. But then, the Harri story has just begun.
