It’s a Torani takeover this festive season

We’re barely halfway through the festive season, but Torani has already emerged as the celebrity set’s favourite. In the span of a few weeks, the Delhi-based label has found takers in everyone from Isha Ambani and Kangana Ranaut to Sharvari, each making headlines for their craft-forward, maximalist Navratri wardrobes.

For designer Karan Torani, who founded the label in 2018 after cutting his teeth at the ateliers of Nida Mahmood and Manish Arora, more has always been more. Think riotous colours, elaborate embroideries, blouses and accessories in statement shapes, and enough ghungroos to announce your arrival before you’ve entered the room. His take on occasionwear is an unabashedly kitschy mashup of Indian craft and textiles—and celebrities like Shanaya Kapoor, Jahnvi Kapoor, Rashmika Mandanna, and Suhana Khan have all previously dipped into the label’s colourful, craft-rich universe.

If, like us, your FYP is also flooded with videos from Falguni Pathak’s garba nights at the Jio World Convention Centre, you’ve likely spotted Sharvari and Ayushmann Khurrana at the event dressed in Torani’s ‘Jogiya’ collection. Inspired by nomadic Indian tribes, the edit features almost 100 separates—from classic lehengas, anarkalis, and kurtas to more contemporary corsets and cropped jackets that riff on those worn by Spanish matadors.

Sharvari’s look, the designer says, was made for movement. The actor wore a Haryanvi-style ghagri skirt embellished with a procession of elephants and paired with a bejewelled choli. Unlike a lehenga, the lightweight ghagri was designed for movement—making it ideal for a night of garba. Khurrana, meanwhile, opted for a brightly coloured silk kurta with mirror-work motifs inspired by windows seen in Indian architecture.

Movement, it turns out, is central to the collection. “The spirit of Navratari marries ‘Jogiya’ really well, because the spirit of jog is inherently about the idea of movement,” says Torani, who likens dancing through hours of garba to losing oneself in devotion or love, and for whom ‘Jogiya’ was meant to capture this ceding to a higher power through constant motion.

We also spotted ‘Jogiya’ on Kangana Ranaut last week at a Navratri event in Raipur. After discovering the piece at a private presentation, Ranaut personally DM-ed the designer a video of herself trying it on. A meeting at her Janpath home and a few fittings later, Ranaut stepped out in Chhattisgarh wearing a Gujarati Kapadi-style choli and patola-inspired embroidered lehenga, going all out with accessories: bajubandhs, oxidised silver jewellery, and chundna on her temples and chin.

The maximalist ‘Jogiya’ sensibility also takes form in custom work. Earlier this month, Isha Ambani wore a custom Torani look at Swadesh’s one-year-anniversary celebrations, styled by Anaita Shroff Adajania. Made in collaboration with Swadesh, the idea for the look originally started as a simple design but evolved, in true Torani fashion, into one requiring some 2,000 hours of work involving multiple craft clusters across the country. “We worked with craftsmen in Odisha, who did the pattachitra detailing of the choli, the border of the lehenga, and the patta. We also worked with kalamkari artists on the Coromandel coast, who painted the main scriptures on the skirt,” Torani explains.

The resulting off-white lehenga depicted the story of Radha and Krishna in bright blue and orange, surrounded by zardozi, French knots, mirror work, and tassels. A matching shirt-style choli with cap sleeves and a vermillion dupatta completed the look.

From Sharvari’s dancefloor-ready ghagri to Ambani’s wearable artwork, Torani’s recent celebrity appearances are united by the same philosophy: why dress down when you can go all out? As the designer himself puts it, “That’s what makes us Torani. That unabashed, unquestionable, unmistakable maximalism where the volume is turned up on all kinds of chaos and crazy.”