I am happy to see that Kotwara is now setting trends. I inherited this passion from my mother, which later found expression in my films, Gaman, Umrao Jaan, Anjuman and Zoonie. Clothes became characters, emotions, season’s occasions and festivals. I learnt couture design from Mary Mc Fadden who was designing the costumes for my film Zoonie in Kashmir. And clothes today have come to mean much more to me. They change lives, heal the body, enrich the soul. They are created with a sense of exploration and discovery through the eyes and the hands, textures meeting the supple skin and becoming part of it. I do not wish to enter the race of competition for I wish to speak the language of the soul which is timeless.

Clothes to me are like long lost friends, they come to me through those who wear them and the aura which they live with...a revelation, a high, a dance meditation. They go beyond comfort to becoming one with the body. They are in essence simple, self-effacing, yet radiating. They are futuristic because they will speak to you a decade from now.

I design with help of my wife Meera whose artistic sensibility as an architect is most contemporary and mature, whose sense of colour, form, texture and detailing is most evolved and her own style of dressing immaculate.

The traditions of clothing in Lucknow have seen a variety of influences. The traditional Indian way of dressing was influenced by the Mughals, Persians, French and the British. The label of Kotwara has thus acquired a style of its own which is both avant-garde and traditional and evokes an image which is an interesting blend of detailing and innovation, modernity and old world charm.

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