Masoom Minawala is no stranger to the Cannes Film Festival red carpet. Over the years, she’s worn several big names including Manish Malhotra, Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla, Arpita Mehta, and Amit Aggarwal. But for her seventh year on the Croisette, instead of turning to India’s marquee couture names, the entrepreneur and investor decided to spotlight younger designers who could benefit from the visibility of a global stage. “Going to the top five [designers] in the country felt a bit predictable,” she says. “This feels a lot fresher, more exciting and fun.”
For the premiere of sHEALed today, Minawala wore a custom crochet look by emerging knitwear designer Anushka Sanghvi—who stylist Dolla Baruah had first discovered on Instagram when Sanghvi had fewer than a thousand followers. “Her work immediately stayed with me,” Baruah says. “It felt mature, intentional, and far beyond the scale at which it was being seen.”
While crochet has been a recurring element across runways this season, Baruah was drawn to the craft for its slowness and intimacy. “Every loop is built by hand, one after another, and that patience felt powerful for a red carpet usually dominated by instant spectacle,” she adds.
The slow technique sits at the heart of Sanghvi’s practice. After completing a foundation year at Central Saint Martins, Sanghvi went on to study knitwear design at London College of Fashion, where she built an impressive resumé before even graduating: an internship with Yuhan Wang, where she crocheted a dress that ended up being worn by Billie Eilish for her fragrance campaign; followed by a stint at Susan Fang, another London Fashion Week fixture; and freelance projects that included creating a look for FKA Twigs. After graduating, Sanghvi worked at knitwear manufacturing studio KBN Knitwear for a year before returning to India, where she now works in the sampling and development department at Chanakya International.
Sanghvi is interested in pushing knitwear in India beyond its winterwear associations. “I feel like so much more can be done if you choose lightweight yarns, open techniques, and lace-like construction, which is what I want to bring forth with my own label as well,” she says.
The Cannes look for Minawala came together over the course of roughly six weeks. “We knew we wanted an evening look, so I sketched out a few ideas,” Sanghvi says. After several sketches and fittings with Minawala in Mumbai, Baruah and Sanghvi landed on a backless mermaid silhouette. “We wanted it to feel sexy without being too revealing, and for the silhouette to accentuate the body while making her feel confident, which I think we achieved with the strategic placement of cutouts and the open back,” she adds.
Once the design was finalised, Sanghvi sent out the yarns and panels to a small network of women artisans. “The whole look was made up of a bunch of different small panels. My mom crochets as well; I actually learned crochet from her. So, it was me, my mom, and a few artisans that we collaborated with. Most of the artisans are women who can’t leave their houses and are looking for a livelihood.” There was no assembly line at an atelier, just panels moving between homes before eventually being stitched together. Because the entire look was crocheted and sewn manually, the process took over 300 hours.
