Aisha Rao's collection at ICW is a love letter to every story that taught us to love

Published 31 July 2026 · india

Long before we learn to tell our own love stories, we inherit someone else's. Shah Jahan's devotion. Salim and Anarkali's forbidden longing. The slow-burn restraint

Long before we learn to tell our own love stories, we inherit someone else's. Shah Jahan's devotion. Salim and Anarkali's forbidden longing. The slow-burn restraint of Pride and Prejudice. The sweeping heartbreak of Anna Karenina. Even, further back still, Adam and Eve. Different centuries, different worlds — yet somehow, the same ache. It's this thread that couturier Aisha Rao pulled at for her latest collection, Priyasi, showcased in association with Nexxus New York, an FDCI initiative, at Hyundai India Couture Week 2026. Rather than restaging these familiar tales, Rao used them as emotional scaffolding — building a collection around three states every love story eventually passes through: Longing, Union, and Remembrance. Read Full Story The space had been transformed into a sculptural field of three towering tulips - a flower that has carried the language of love across cultures for centuries – each representing an emotional state. Layered lighting, a cinematic score, and a live performance blurred the line between spectacle and story, asking the audience to feel their way through the collection rather than simply watch it. True to Rao's design vocabulary, Priyasi was built on dense embroidery, polychromatic applique, and layers upon layers of craftsmanship — silhouettes that moved fluidly between archival reference and something distinctly current.

Botanical motifs and richly textured, sculptural surfaces gave the three emotional chapters their visual form. Aisha Rao's Priyasi transformed timeless narratives into contemporary couture. The season also pushed further into what the label calls "purposeful luxury," with two new bio-based materials — bio-resham and bio-badla — folded into the collection's fabric library, alongside the house's now-signature use of applique built from atelier waste. The collection's world extended beyond clothing, too. In partnership with Shree Jewellers, Rao unveiled a fine jewellery line she designed herself as a direct continuation of Priyasi — each piece carrying forward the same visual language through detailed work and carefully placed coloured stones. In an exclusive interaction with India Today Digital following the showcase, Aisha Rao spoke about her approach to sustainable fabric innovation, her lifelong pull toward romance, and the idea she hopes audiences carry home from Priyasi. On why she calls it "purposeful luxury" rather than sustainability "We endeavour each season to create purposeful luxury. Because we deal with so many different kinds of fabrics — we do a pret line, we do an India Modern line, we work with yarns, we work with dobbies — and when you have that kind of inventory, and applique as our signature, I wanted to build something without calling it a zero-waste ideology, because I didn't want it to sound like greenwashing.