Designers David Abraham, Rakesh Thakore and Kevin Nigli have a new address for their handcrafted apparel and home brand Abraham & Thakore in New Delhi’s affluent neighbourhood, Defence Colony. Co-designed by Studio Organon, a Delhi-based architecture and design studio, the shop’s interiors compliment the label’s minimalist visual grammar with polished, white-marbled walls (diagonally and spaciously stained with faint streaks of black) and square-mesh-patterned terrazzo flooring. An open closet lines the store’s walls which are mounted with garment rods. Black shelves are dedicated to dainty ceramics, while linens and carpets accentuate the furniture that fills the store’s remaining space.
This is the brand’s third store in the capital, an upgrade of sorts from its nearly 12-year-old outlet in the city’s south-east vicinity. “When this property came up, it had a large space (about 2,000 sq. ft.). We shut the previous store to accommodate a vast collection of fashion and lifestyle here,” says David. He lists out the brand’s other two establishments — one in The Dhan Mill, near Chhatarpur, and another in DLF Promenade, Vasant Kunj. “But these are smaller stores that focus more on fashion,” he adds.
The label’s design aesthetics pivot on Indian textiles and crafts. Its autumn/winter 2011-12 double ikat silk houndstooth sari and shirt is part of the permanent archives of Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Since 1992, the brand has opened stores in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Rome and Kuwait, but it started to expand its footprint in India from 2022 after Reliance Brands Ltd (RBL) acquired its majority stake. “Currently we have six stores in India, with two more coming up in Hyderabad next month and Mumbai by September,” says David.
He credits the label’s success to its tact of finding the simplest way to communicate fairly complex designs. “We are interested in complex structures, when it comes to weaving, like our double ikat is a very complex weave. We always try to focus on the essence of a particular technique. So, we think: do we really want to have 10 forms or patterns in a design when we can have just one? Is it important to have many curly lines when we can express our design language with a single straight line?”
This philosophy of aesthetics reverberates in the brand’s latest spring/summer home and apparel edit, Body Language. Housed in the new atelier, the range features numbers, alphabets and symbols, to form a playful typography. It explores ikat, ajrakh, brocades, badla, sequin, and fine laser cut work. “In every collection, there’s a composite of everything — there will be some silks from Varanasi, industrial tencel linen blends from mills in Surat, Maheshwar silk cotton woven on a handloom. I have many ikat fabrics being woven right now in Telangana. So, we work with many techniques in several clusters at the same time. So, every collection has a little bit of everything,” informs David.
The brand recently exhibited its textiles and ceramics collection at AD Design Show 2023. At this store too, there are napkins and table runners dotted with the brand’s signature kantha stitches. It also showcases porcelain bowls, marble cheese plates, scented candles sets, ikat bed linen and artwork centred on the motif of the dot. “We get all our manufacturing done in and around Delhi. All the design work, prototypes and sample collection are done in our studio,” says David. He explains that it takes about six months for a collection to reach the store’s shelves after sampling. “It’s a very slow process. By the time the collection hits the store, we are already onto our next collection,” he adds.
David shares that the brand has several workshops, “approximately 30 to 40 vendors and suppliers, across the country that vary according to the textiles, techniques.”. He states that the brand’s association with its ikat weavers dates back to when it launched its first collection. “For ikat, it’s Andhra Pradesh, for brocade, it’s Varanasi, for glass there are factories in Faridabad or Moradabad, ceramics are done somewhere outside Delhi where we also have our shoemakers – so its scattered and we work with a lot of small scale industries across India,” he says.
At the new store, clothing starts at ₹3,990 and home collections start at ₹14,990
