Kunal Rawal, the youngest designer to exhibit his collection at the Lakme Fashion Week, has worked for several prominent Bollywood celebrities like Anil Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Siddharth Malhotra, and Varun Dhawan among others, who have come ahead to close the show for him.
Recapping his journey and how Kunal decided to become a designer, he said, “I knew pretty early on as my family works in textiles and my father has an export firm. He used to go to this factory and used to take me and my sister as well to late-night drives at the factory. We both used to climb up and shut our eyes and play this game and guess the fabric. Pretty early on, I knew textiles and fashion is what I want to do, what my calling is, and where my interest lies.”
Kunal started his label ‘Kunal Rawal Dstress’ in 2006. Having graduated from the London School of Fashion, his style of design can be best described as a melange of traditional Indian clothing and contemporary designs with an edgy twist. The designer added, “The more I got into it the more I realised that there were so many things going wrong as a lot of men didn’t choose what they wear for an occasion. They didn’t dress according to how they felt and had a severe lack of optionality.”
Talking about the USP of his label, Kunal said, “The idea was to put in elements and details to pique men’s interest rather than having them just wear something that’s given to them. And the more you pique interest, the more the conversation starts, and that’s what I’ve been consciously trying to put in elements and a design aesthetic that is slightly more relatable and caters to the user. Today, I am all for traditional clothing, I love it, but it needs to be modernised and contemporise to suit the headspace of the millennials and the lifestyle that we all live globally.”
When asked what inspired him to create his first designer collection back then to now, he replied, “Inspiration keeps changing, it keeps evolving. But if I have to pick one or two inspirations I would say people inspire me. I believe that the youth in India, the younger generation is far more progressive than the youth of even the strongest first world countries and that is very inspiring.”
Sharing some lessons learnt and challenges faced during the lockdown, Kunal said, “This last year and a half has been quite a challenge for all of us and especially for as much for our industry compared to any other. Well, I am a creative person first, and then a business owner. So, both these have called on different emotions throughout this time. I think we’ve all learnt as much as we’ve learnt our whole life in the last year and a half. We’ve been through a gamut of emotions living life. We felt anger, pain, happiness, and helplessness, have gone through the entire cycle of emotional circumstances, and every month, every day has been very different.”
“Being a creative person, I have enjoyed bits and pieces of last year as it gave me a good amount of time to go back to how I used to create when I was much younger, finding and chasing a thought and doing R&D and all of that was exciting. Creatives have a way of constructively using any emotion. I managed to put out the two big collections last season, we were a part of the India Couture Week and Lakme Fashion Week so I’m glad I got some creative energy out. But, as a business owner, things kept changing and it’s been quite challenging. My biggest learning through last year is the importance of plan A, plan B, and plan C,” he added.
