Stuti Gupta
“Patraani and I were born in the same year. I have never known a home without fabric in it.”
Nineteen ninety-five was the year my aunt, Ritu, came home from NIFT Delhi and started a label. It was also the year I was born. So I grew up surrounded by it all — the fashion, the fabrics, the embellishments — the way other children grow up around a family shop or a family farm. The dining table was a cutting table. The karigars were uncles. A tray of sequins was as ordinary as a bowl of fruit.
What I understood only later is how unusual the thing was that they were building. Our USP has always been extremely delicate, intricate Indian embroidery, done entirely by hand by our super-skilled embroiderers — men who have been with us longer than I have been alive. Our customers have stayed loyal for thirty years, and when you ask them why, they say the same things: the garments are evergreen, the quality is exceptional, and the price is nothing like what the market asks for work that is, honestly, far coarser than ours.
My mother's table
When my aunt got married and relocated, my mother, Neena, took over the label — and has run it ever since. I joined her soon after finishing my graduation in Fashion Design, to help with the designing. I like to say I joined the business; the truth is I simply came home and sat down at her table.
Ri · Ne · Stu
In time I started my own sub-label, Rinestu. Where Patraani is the hand, Rinestu is the machine — intricate machine embroidery, executed by our own karigars, with the same eye and the same standards. The name is an acronym, and a small act of gratitude: the first letters of the three women who built this house. Ritu, my aunt. Neena, my mother. Stuti, me.
What Patraani is
Patraani is fashion in its most cultivated form. A limited-edition, eclectic assortment of Indian clothes with fine ornate embroideries in traditional cuts, and Western clothes with delicate embroideries in atypical styles. We make garments for today's women — women of choice, women who live in the smaller details of life, women who believe in durability. That is why our clients fall in love with what they wear, and why they come back.
Our fabrics are of the finest quality, our workmanship exquisite, our designs original and our pricing genuinely competitive. I could say that about many labels. I can prove it about ours — come to Civil Lines and lean in close.