James Ferreira has never minced words before. He’s not starting now

James Ferreira turns 69 today, and if that number makes you smirk, he won’t mind. At home in his heritage bungalow in Khotachiwadi, Mumbai, breezy in a white T-shirt printed with a photo of his brother’s face, a pair of old denim shorts, and purple Havaianas, Ferreira is still serving what he’s always stood for: taste, irreverence, and zero regard for the algorithm.

Ferreira has lived many lives—fashion designer, costume maker, legendary dinner-party host, hoarder of beautiful things, occasional hotelier—but perhaps his real legacy is how little he’s cared for fitting in. For someone who’s done everything from designing disco-era film costumes to mentoring some of India’s biggest names in fashion, he is refreshingly free of bitterness—though that’s not to say he doesn’t have opinions.

But before the rants (of which there are many), there was a boy who fell in love with fashion. As a child, Ferreira would often accompany his mother to the seamstresses. “My mum was very, very stylish,” he says, pointing to a framed portrait of her on the wall. “On Thursdays, which was my weekly holiday, we went to the Jewish dressmakers to make her evening dresses. Her day dresses and hats came from a lady in Bandra, her gloves came from the Villa Theresa nuns, her shoes from a Chinese shoemaker in Colaba. That’s how I spent my weekends and holidays.”

Ferreira always knew he wanted to make clothes. After a foundation course at JJ School of Art, he enrolled in Sheroo Cooper’s cutting class and paid his way by sewing, which landed him his first job, in 1976, at Bombay’s “only boutique at the time”—the brilliantly named Purple Pussycat. “Salome Roy Kapur was the manager, and I was the designer. So that’s when I also did all the fashion shows for Filmfare, the Miss Indias, and everything.”

Soon after, he joined Orkay Silk Mills, where he was the lone Indian designer among a sea of Europeans, learning how to drape from his colleagues. A stint in London with Zandra Rhodes followed, then Delhi, where he worked with the government’s Handicrafts and Handloom Exports Corporation of India and the Central Cottage Industries Corporation (“a dream”). “Each karigar had their own workspace, an iron, and a pedal machine. They were experts in hand finishes—the best I had worked with at the time.”

But Bombay, as always, pulled him back. In the ’80s, he joined Kishor Bajaj’s label, Bada Sahab, designing costumes for films like Disco Dancer (1982), Teri Baahon Mein (1984), Adventures of Tarzan (1985), and Shahenshah (1985). Around the same time, he launched First Lady, the wildly popular women’s boutique. “I think that’s when most of Bombay would wear my clothes,” Ferreira says. “But you know, back then, there was a big divide between south Bombay and film stars. My friends teased me constantly: ‘You’re designing costumes for movies? Ewww.’ And then they’d walk into my workshop and come out wearing something I made for Kimi Katkar,” he recalls, laughing.

It was also around this time that Ferreira discovered a gap—or rather, a seam—in the Indian fashion system and began developing his signature: ‘one-piece fashion’. “The gents’ tailors were proficient—Indian men had always worn shirts and trousers. But women had been pushed into salwar-kurtas. Western wear was left to the odd dressmaker, if at all,” he recalls. “Our tailor didn’t even know how to put a dart. That’s when I started draping, minimising seams. I still use that method today, and it’s only out of necessity because, till date, I think we have the same problem,” he says, shrugging.

Of course, most know him as the designer of the draped dress—sorcery in soft silk that always flattered the person wearing it. “That’s been appropriated by everyone now,” he laughs, without bitterness but definitely with shade. “Many of them worked for me at some point.” He doesn’t name names, but he doesn’t need to.

His refusal to play the fashion game—to schmooze, to strategise, to do what he calls “arse-licking”—has often cost him. “I’d walk into a party and say the nastiest things to the most important person in the room,” he recalls. “People would approach me, and I’d just turn 90 degrees and start talking to someone else and snub them.”

The ’80s were wild, and so was he. “I’d walk from Girgaon to Haji Ali looking for the best-looking taxi driver to take me to work,” he recalls. “Getting dressed would take hours.”

One infamous anecdote: Ferreira once kept Nargis and Sunil Dutt waiting from 11 am to 5:30 pm for a meeting. He showed up late, in a dhoti with net underneath and feathers in his hair, and promptly got the garment caught on a window hook—leaving him dhoti-less in front of the room. “That broke the ice and everything was fine,” he says with a smile. “But still. I was a monster. I’d hide on the terrace when clients came for trials. It all makes for a great story, but it didn’t make a solid career,” he chortles.

I was a monster. I’d hide on the terrace when clients came for trials. It all makes for a great story, but it didn’t make a solid career.”

And yet, there’s no sense of victimhood. Just a little bemused regret. “Now I want to be on time for everything,” he confesses. “I cringe now. I curl into a ball at night from embarrassment when I think of how rude I was.”

Does he still take as long to get dressed?

“I dress very quickly now. I mean, look at me—I’m in my brother’s clothes. But I do love dressing up if I have to go out for a party,” he says.

There is no mythologizing here. Ferreira isn’t nostalgic about the chaos, just honest about it. Earlier, he would dress in dhotis and lungis to “shock and awe”, but now it’s just what he lives in. And today, he’s incredibly grounded. He credits Srila Chatterjee’s gallery 47-A, located just down the road, with reviving his sales. “Nobody knew about me online,” he shrugs. “Now, suddenly, sales are up 300 per cent. So, [I’ve gone] from just scraping to managing to pay my tailors. Now it’s much nicer for me.”

His fashion label isn’t exactly dormant, but it’s not online either. However, he does spend a lot of time on Instagram. His social media is a stream-of-consciousness scrapbook: a snapshot of him navigating modernity with curiosity. He posts reels about sustainable architecture and tech, the occasional selfie, pictures of guests and the food from dinners he hosts in his home. And his home—one of the last surviving East Indian bungalows in Khotachiwadi—is now as much a part of his identity as his fashion. “I just have fun with it now,” he says of his social media habits.

Ferreira is annoyed by how little has changed. He’s taught at several institutes over the years and still can’t get over the fact that students are allowed to outsource their final collections. “This is the only country in the world where we let them use paid tailors for their exam pieces. Of course they don’t know how to cut. So, we have a half-trained lot of imbeciles coming out every year.”

He’s stopped taking interns entirely. “Most of them won’t serve tea to a client or hang a garment back on the hanger.” What bothers him most isn’t the lack of skills but the lack of humility. “There’s no dignity in labour here. As soon as they graduate, most of our students have got collections with fabulous stories and fabulous PR, their friends and family buy the clothes, and so they’re a designer.”

“They’re brilliant at selling, don’t get me wrong,” he says. “But there’s no meat to the bone.”

Ferreira’s critique doesn’t stop at education. It’s the whole system: fashion weeks, fashion media, even the so-called fashion elite. “We don’t even have a size chart,” he says. “Our couture is machine embroidery with a few beads thrown on to pass it off as handmade. We sell satin viscose from Surat for ₹250 a metre to clients who don’t know shit, and call it luxury. It just upsets me to go out and see the ridiculousness of people. And Labubus—what the hell is that?”

Fashion writing, in his eyes, has turned to flattery. “Nobody wants to be blacklisted from the next show or designer dinner. It’s all PR and ass-licking—and I’m not interested.” He doesn’t go to fashion week. He doesn’t read magazines. “I’ve got such a big mouth, I’m not invited anywhere anyway.”

As for the wave of international brands mining India for inspiration—and the recent Kolhapuri chappal debacle with Prada? “It’s so boring,” he says. “The money’s in the global South. Korea, China, India, the Middle East. That’s all this is. So why are we still kissing white ass instead of building something of our own, something sustainable?” He’s equally damning of Indian designers’ own erasure of artisans. “Who’s given the bandhani maker or the Kolhapuri cobbler their due? Nobody. We put our names first. Here, we exploit them.”

What frustrates him most isn’t that the system is broken but that so few seem interested in fixing it. There’s a divine weariness to his exasperation, the kind that comes from having seen it all and having no patience left for nonsense.

In the afternoon, he descends the outdoor staircase in a floaty white kaftan he got from a souk in Morocco. “I usually wear it without pants,” he announces.

His days now are slower, but no less creative. He designs each night at home, improvising directly on the dummy. He still handles personal orders, still teaches occasionally (“I prefer going to the smaller centres, like Raipur, Jodhpur, and Pune, because I get people with more integrity who are not so entitled”), still dresses up when he does go out, still plays with fabric like a musician. “Every time I throw fabric on a dummy, I want to do something that I’ve not done before. It’s a whole process of learning, and you never stop learning.” Right now, he’s thinking of reviving old ideas—like his irreverent T-shirt line from 2007 with phrases like ‘Raja Beta’ and ‘Ek Phool Das Mali’ in Devanagari script. (Later, he changes into one that reads ‘Roop Mera Mastana’ and grins.)

But his days are largely for other things: tending to the plants on his terrace (he’s got many, including mulberry, blackberry, and grape), chatting with guests at his bed-and-breakfast downstairs, or planning dinner. He’s happiest when there’s someone to cook for. “I love entertaining,” he says. “I love people.”

When I ask him if he’s excited about his birthday, he says: “In my mind, I’m still 14 years old. I love getting old and I think it’s so beautiful because you learn so much. That makes life so much easier. I wish I was old when I was young,” he says, laughing. “If I had this sort of wisdom as I have right now at 69… can you imagine what we could have done with our lives?”

But there are things he still wants to do. “I used to paint when I was younger. I want to start painting again, desperately,” he tells me. “But I live such a public life; my home is open to everyone. And to paint, you need to be very private.”

He gestures toward his terrace upstairs. “Maybe up there, when I’m old.” Even now, at 69, he’s just getting started.