Dhruv Kapoor SS26 collection, titled Foundations & Futures, opens with garments traditionally assigned to private spaces, underwear, vests, and petticoats. These pieces, long marked by associations of modesty, shame, or excess, now step into visibility as outerwear. Kapoor repositions them as symbols of empowerment and rebellion. What once remained concealed now surfaces, transformed into a statement of strength.
This shift establishes the collection’s central dialogue: a compression of past, present, and future into form. Kapoor draws from memory and surroundings, retrieving references to reinterpret them through a lens of renewal. Each garment carries an imprint of time while refusing to remain confined by history. The act of making visible what tradition sought to conceal becomes both the foundation and the future of this collection.
Kapoor extends this language of reclamation to traditional Indian garments. The kurta, the bandhgala jacket, and petticoat structures enter the runway reshaped and distorted. Classic outlines expand and twist, allowing familiar silhouettes to collide with contemporary desire. By recoding these archetypes, Kapoor prevents them from being relics. Instead, he transforms them into active architectures, fluid, unbound, and alive.
Color plays a central role in the season’s narrative. Kapoor draws from planetary hues described in the Vedas, treating them as cosmic alignments between body and universe. These tones act as rituals, shields of intimacy, energy, and protection. The palette carries a metaphysical weight, implying that clothing operates as a site of memory and connection.
The collection further defines itself through its approach to structure. Kapoor views each garment as an architectural proposition: scaffolds of identity, desire, and resistance. Rather than decorating the body, these pieces expose codes that culture often attempts to conceal. Underwear becomes monumental. Gendered categories dissolve into fluid forms. The hidden transforms into a framework for visibility. Time itself becomes an element of design, with garments standing as monuments to memory and projection.
Collaboration strengthens the show’s sensory depth. Kapoor partners with Paloceras, the Helsinki-based eyewear label known for sculptural frames that blur perception, and Aïsha Devi, the Swiss-Nepali artist celebrated for immersive sound design. Paloceras extends Kapoor’s visual vocabulary with eyewear that distorts sightlines, while Devi contributes an exclusive track that amplifies the emotional intensity of the runway.
