It’s a sweet, fashionable love story. Fashion marketing student Neha Singh met Pranav Guglani on her last day at Pearl Academy of Fashion. The two immediately hit it off. “We were sweet on love” is how Guglani describes it. Two years later, the pair started dreaming together of having something of their own, and in 2014 they started Cord with a line of leather bags that they uploaded on a Facebook album. Now 11 years later, the brand boasts five stores—two in Mumbai, two in Delhi, and one in Hyderabad—and they’ve expanded their line to include women’s and menswear. Among their fans are celebrities like Kareena Kapoor Khan, Farhan Akhtar, Alaya F, and Neha Dhupia.
With Cord, the designers have created a whimsical, nostalgia-fuelled world of their own. One that makes for Instagram eye candy but also tugs at the heartstrings of those who long for a simpler time. Its filled with red-tiled cottages and verdant fields (that’s a print on a velvet coat), high-neck, smocked blouses that look like they could be worn by an English farmhand, polished leather accessories with brass hardware, wide-leg pants fit for a ’60s dandy, even saris covered in painterly landscapes of flowers.
“If there was anything that we were 100 per cent sure of, it was this: we wanted to create something that is more timeless, not season-based,” says Singh, who herself could be seen as her own best billboard. Her Instagram account is a delightful lesson in how to wear the brand’s distinctive, vintage-inspired designs, from their bishop-sleeved dresses embroidered with birds to their patchwork gilets and jackets that she wears with wide skirts and chunky brogues. Right before their anniversary celebrations in New Delhi, the pair spoke to The Nod about their new life as working parents and their love for men’s ties.
