The Woman Who
Wears Her Work

Pragya Shrivastava ran into fashion designing while dropping her younger sister to classes in a building that, quite by chance, also housed a fashion designing institute. The teacher there — perceptive in the way that the best mentors always are — noticed her repeatedly, admired the quiet confidence of her dressing, and extended an invitation: try the course, at no cost, and see what happens. What happened was rather remarkable. She sat down, stitched two or three dresses, and discovered something that would take the rest of her life to fully express. Fashion designing did not feel like a choice so much as a recognition.

Formal training followed. She completed her MSc in Fashion Designing before enrolling at NIFD, Delhi, where rigour was added to instinct. Five years in the capital shaped her considerably, not least the two she spent working under Ritu Berry — one of Indian fashion’s most disciplined creative forces. The education proved its worth swiftly. In 2003, her jackets were worn by the Prime Minister of India and the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh at a formal function. By 2007, she had dressed Miss India. Celebrities followed, among them Preeti Zinta. A career, quietly and surely, had arrived.

She speaks of her husband with the particular warmth of someone who has never had to fight on two fronts. In an industry where women frequently navigate not only the demands of their craft but the indifference — or worse, the opposition — of those closest to them, Pragya has been spared that particular battle. Her husband has been present throughout: financially, practically, morally. She credits him without hesitation. It matters, she implies, more than most people acknowledge.

Her aesthetic is rooted in Indo-Western fusion, with a pronounced fluency in Sindhi and Punjabi dress traditions. In the early years, when clientele was sparse and word of mouth had yet to do its work, she did something rather ingenious: she wore her own designs. To parties, to social occasions, to any room where people with eyes might be paying attention. They always were. Inquiries would arrive before the evening ended; orders were placed on the spot. She describes herself, with neither false modesty nor vanity, as her own most effective brand ambassador. It is difficult to argue with the logic. When the designer is the advertisement, the campaign never stops.

Underpinning all of it is an almost philosophical commitment to finishing. In Pragya’s view, the finest fabric in the world and the most accomplished tailor alive amount to very little if the finishing is poor. Whatever ends well, begins well, she says — and she means it as more than craft advice. It reads, in her telling, as something closer to a world view.

The road, naturally, has not been without its darker passages. The cruellest obstacles, she reflects, rarely come from strangers. Friends, over the years, have enticed away her most trusted employees with the lure of higher salaries. On one particularly bruising occasion, a master pattern — prepared for a high-profile order for the Collector of her town — was taken by someone she had trusted implicitly. She worked through the night, rebuilt the work from nothing, and delivered. The Collector, upon learning what had transpired, responded with a generosity of spirit that Pragya still speaks of with gratitude. The dress, completed under those circumstances, was, by all accounts, beautiful.

Today, she operates three boutiques: a presence in Chandni Chowk, Delhi; an establishment in Sehore, Madhya Pradesh; and, most recently, Woomaniya by Tabbu in Viman Nagar, Pune. On the subject of new beginnings in new cities, she is characteristically clear-eyed. Reputation, however hard-won, does not travel automatically. It must be re-earned — from the first fitting, the first order, the first hem. There are no inherited advantages in a market that does not yet know your name.

Pune, she observes, presents its own particular landscape. The pricing, she notes with measured directness, bears little relation to the quality on offer. Work of a standard that might cost ten to twenty thousand rupees in Delhi frequently commands fifty to eighty thousand here. It is not a grievance so much as an observation — one that has quietly informed how she positions herself in the city.

Her creative focus in Pune is firmly on lehengas and Indo-Western silhouettes, and she is currently engaged in something that genuinely excites her: a fusion of Northern Indian design with Maharashtrian textile traditions, an attempt to produce something the market has not quite seen before. A USP, she calls it, with the pragmatism of someone who understands that beauty alone is insufficient currency.

Social responsibility, meanwhile, is not an afterthought. She provides fall and pico work to women who work from home, and commits ten percent of her earnings to charitable giving. It is, like most things about her, done quietly and without performance.

To the next generation of designers — the ones emerging from expensive institutes with immaculate portfolios and uncertain hands — she has a single, pointed message: learn the craft. The sketches can wait. Get your hands on the fabric. Measure the client. Understand the body in front of you, the drape of a material, the conversation between cut and form. Twenty-five lakhs spent at a prestigious institution, she says, is worth precisely nothing without technical competence beneath it. Fashion is not theoretical. It never has been.

Fifteen years in, Pragya Shrivastava wears her work — quite literally — with the ease of someone who has made peace with every stitch of the journey. One city, one boutique, one immaculately finished garment at a time.