Suhail Sahrawat of Garuda SS finds fashion podcasts “excruciating”

Name: Suhail Sahrawat

Age: 32

Profession: Apparel designer

Location: Panchkula, Chandigarh

Why you should know him: If you’ve spent more than five minutes on Indian fashion Instagram, you’ve probably seen Garuda SS. Maybe it was the reel where Sahrawat dismantled the “NRI touch” while the internet side-eyed global brands for slapping Kolhapuris on runways. Or maybe it was him—unsmiling, cradling a near-life-sized companion doll like it’s the most normal thing in the world. Born in India and raised in New Zealand, he founded Garuda SS in 2015 after returning to India without a design degree or industry connections. The brand began with functional, military-inspired pieces and quietly built a reputation for its purposeful, anti-hype clothing. Also, his takes on fashion discourse are as good as his trousers.

What inspired his label’s name: “The brand is called Garuda SS, which is the eagle-like creature in Hinduism and Buddhism. It was also my dad’s battalion logo in the Indian Army. A lot of people say, ‘Oh wow, the story about your dad is so amazing.’ But the truth is, the name was a last-minute decision. I just saw all these trophies from my dad’s time in the army at home, and the name stuck.”

Why his brand logo doesn’t bear the name: “It’s never been about the name, and it’s never going to. Our logo is just stitches. Even our website doesn’t display the brand name. I was inspired by the Bottega Veneta slogan: ‘When your own initials are enough.’ It’s something we’ve always believed in. The branding is there on the garments, but we’ve done it in a way that you can take it off. We want our customers to be people who have more going on in their lives than just our clothes. Wearing Garuda SS is never going to save you from being a shitty person.”

His aesthetic is inspired by his childhood: “My style inspo comes from my time growing up in New Zealand. My parents were really big on looking presentable. My dad would pick me up from school in a three-piece suit even though he was fully retired. Despite having older siblings, I always had the fortune of having brand-new clothes. New Zealand has a big outdoor-wear culture because there can be four seasons in a day. When we started, it was with a waterproof and sweatproof fabric. I’m very fortunate I get to wear Garuda SS all day, which is something very few people can say.”

On his approach to design: “Even though I wear Garuda SS, I’m not really designing for myself. Our designs are very consumer-centric—we try to make things that we think other brands aren’t making. I wouldn’t necessarily wear everything, but that’s never been the goal.”

His daily routine: “I wake up, have coffee, go to the studio, walk my dog, and come back around six or seven. I watch reels while I bedrot, eat my meals, then walk my dog again, and go to sleep. Oh yeah, my mom says I’m not a party boy.”

His doomscroll diet: “Breakdowns of basketball games or lore about shit like The Lord of the Rings, Dune and The Three-Body Problem have been my jam recently.”

Why he hates people over-intellectualising fashion online: “The amount of discourse online about fashion is frankly out of fucking hand. I would love fashion podcasts to stop; it’s excruciating to deal with. To me, clothing has always been about tactility.”

The designers he admires: “I have actively unfollowed everyone on Instagram except Yohji Yamamoto. Everything else is completely in my peripheral vision. Aitor Throup is making a comeback this year, so that’s cool. I love Iris Van Herpen as well—very fun to look at. Along with Hussein Chalayan, Jun Takahashi, and Errolson Hugh of Acronym.”

What he’s listening to: “It really depends on the day. Lifafa, Death Grips, Justin Bieber.”

On the Indian fashion scene: “It’s a hard industry to get your foot in the door, but once you’re in, you realise it’s kind of a joke. People gatekeep a lot. I think nobody wants others to realise how easy it is to operate in this industry. They make it seem more difficult than it is, and people stay away.”

In another life, he’d still be a designer: “I’d probably never end up in architecture because I’m not good at physics, unfortunately. But I would still be in design in some way. Industrial design, maybe.”

What his family thinks of his job: “Oh, I think they all think it’s fucking cooked. But they also agree that I must know what I’m doing; it’s been 10 years. My brother was making fun of me this one time for wearing a ripped shirt, but my mom, while making fun of me, was like, ‘Do you realise how much money he’s made off this one fucking stupid design?’”

The weirdest thing on his bag: “We made a small version of our Canvas Companion bag that’s the size of a Labubu. It’s just a fun piece that I’ve been carrying on my bag. Everyone stares at it because, you know, I’m clearly 30 years old. Why the fuck do I have a toy on my back?”

What’s next for Garuda: “We’ve just dropped our new annual collection, Shelter. In 2023, there were only two women’s pieces. But this year, for the first time, we’ve done a lot more womenswear—almost 30 per cent of the collection. We have another ready-to-wear line that drops year-round—whenever we feel like it. We’ve also been working on a book that documents all the 250-ish garments we’ve made over the past decade.”