Is that your grandma’s coat? Vicksit Mehta will probably take it

Vicksit Mehta has spent over 25 years working in fashion, developing textiles and garment collections for some of the world’s biggest high-street brands—Hugo Boss, Zara, Gap, Banana Republic...you name it. His own relationship to style, though, is shaped less by the industry’s churn of trends than by something far more constant: a lifelong dialogue with his mother, Manorama Mehta.

The two, now in their fifties and eighties respectively, have spent decades in aesthetic alignment. If you look through Mehta’s Instagram, you’d notice they match in some sense, but not exactly. There’s a sense of uncontrived cohesiveness, like a shared sensibility that makes their photographs together feel styled rather than just thrown together—even if they do lay out their clothes the night before.

Mehta grew up in a household getting dressed was somewhat serious business. His earliest fashion memory is unusually specific: when he was about four or five years old, he refused to go to school because he disapproved of the way his teacher wore her saris. “I told my mother I don’t want to go to school because my teacher’s feet are ugly and she doesn’t know how to wear her sari,” he reveals demurely. In retrospect, it’s a neat origin story: an early intolerance for aesthetic discord, along with a mother who dressed him in tweeds, ties, and bow ties—a uniform that, in some form, has endured. “I’m sure I made some little contribution, but that’s how she dressed me and it stayed on forever,” he says now. “For me, style is how you live, how you breathe life, as opposed to trying too hard to look good and being seen.”

Today, Mehta works at Arvind Mills, the almost century-old textile conglomerate based in Ahmedabad. His style leans classic—traditional silhouettes updated with comfortable fabrications and little but impactful accessories like pussy bow and bolo ties. “I buy pieces that can last forever,” he says from his office desk over a video call, with a row of vintage trunks, cones of yarn, and cotton flowers on the shelves behind him. “They don’t necessarily have to look good. Sometimes, they’re just comfortable, plain, and solid. I like pieces that marry technology with classic looks, fabrications, aesthetics.”

A four-way-stretch jacket, like the one he’s wearing today, might borrow its shape from a vintage garment. A decades-old trouser might be paired with a T-shirt from Uniqlo or H&M. “I also buy a lot of vintage—a lot of grandparents’ and grandmom’s stuff. My style is gender-fluid, so I wear whatever looks nice on me,” he adds.

If it feels practiced, it’s because it has always been a collective effort in the household. Mehta is quick to point out that his mother—and earlier, even his father—were never passive observers of the development of his style. “As long as I remember, the three of us have always been like this—my mom, my father, and I,” he says. “I have a sister as well, but she isn’t as particular. [But the rest of us] have always cared about how we look and how we should dress appropriately.” With his mother, the coordination is organic, almost typical. “It’s a very natural phenomenon for us: what are we going to wear today?” he explains.

That effortlessness, though, comes from years of discipline. Mehta is someone who lays out his clothes the night before and looks at dressing as part of a larger system that includes means, prayer, and a routine. For him, style is not just a way of self-expression but also a form of self-regulation. Though he has been documenting his life online since the early days of Facebook, his posting habits aren’t about outward projection. “When I’m posting on Instagram, I am not posting it for likes; I’m posting it for myself,” he says. The images—often of him and his mother standing side by side, or him leaning against a chair as Mrs Mehta sits on—is the documentation of a shared eye; while the text posts that pepper his profile are quotes verbatim or inspired by things he’s reading.

Mehta’s eye has also been shaped in part by travel. He speaks at length about Japan, where he has travelled for about 25 years, often for work, and where his understanding and appreciation for aesthetics seem to have crystallised. He is drawn to what he describes as the country’s ability to hold opposites at once—minimalism and maximalism—but also to something less tangible, like their philosophy or way of life. “I’ve learned a lot of things from the Japanese—how they treasure and value things and, again, that aesthetics is not something that you try too hard for,” he says of the culture. “It’s a part of your daily routine, from how you drink tea to everything.”

The philosophy extends to how—and whether—he shops. Despite being entrenched in the industry, he is indifferent to labels now, a shift from how he approached fashion earlier. “If we were talking 10 years ago, I would perhaps just be talking about labels because that was the culture,” he confesses. Today, Mehta shops across geographies and price points, mixing vintage with high street, though he also increasingly shops less. When I ask him if swiping a credit card brings him joy, “Not so much anymore,” he replies. “I recycle a lot now… I don’t like to throw things away.” He occasionally gifts clothing to friends and peers who appreciate a piece, and looks at sustainability as something that’s embedded in our culture. “It’s a very Indian phenomenon. The hand-me-down culture has been with us forever.” While he might be uninterested in labels, he’s not immune to admiration—he still looks to Commes des Garçons, Jil Sander, Ralph Lauren, 45R, and Kapital but less as labels to buy into and more as benchmarks for a certain way of thinking about clothes.

The same could be said of his mother’s wardrobe, which has been built over decades and worn on repeat. Her approach to style, according to him, is anchored in “simplicity and elegance. Something that is eternal and classic”. Like him, she no longer shops for the sake of it and recycles often from the collection she has amassed over the last 50 or 60 years. Mehta speaks about buying things for his mother when he travels, about accompanying her when she shops. If there is some saccharine sentimentality here, it is highly understated. They share a sensibility that doesn’t require much articulation, and their visual harmony feels almost incidental. It is simply what happens when two people, over time, come to see the world through a similar lens.