Anurag Gupta has always been interested in how clothes occupy space — not just on the body, but around it. His work has a persistent preoccupation with structure, with the idea that a garment can carry its own weight, hold its own presence. For SS'26 at Lakmē Fashion Week, that preoccupation found a new, sharper focus. The collection, titled 'The New Primitive', began, as many of his seasons do, with an image — or rather, a body of images.

That body of work belonged to Utagawa Kuniyoshi, the nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock master whose prints are defined by their muscular compositions, dynamic figures and a visual language that feels almost architectural in its command of form. "The starting point of the mood board was the work of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, particularly the visual language and compositions in his paintings," Gupta says. "I was interested in translating those elements into contemporary silhouettes." Certain traditional Japanese silhouettes also filtered through, informing how the pieces layer and how they sit on the body.

What's interesting about how Gupta works is that the mood board doesn't go straight to the sketchpad. Before the silhouettes, there were the textiles. He spent time in the early stages of the process developing new fabric structures — experimenting with how materials could be engineered to introduce form and strength from within.

"Before starting the collection, I spent time developing the textiles and structures first," he explains. "That process influenced how the fabrics behave and the kind of textures that appear in the garments. Once those elements were established, the colour palette and overall visual direction started to evolve naturally from the materials and surfaces themselves."

It's a way of working that lets the material lead — and the collection reflects that. The clarity of the final silhouettes feels earned, like it came from somewhere real.

The silhouettes that emerged from that process are confident and unambiguous. High, rounded shoulders. Broader lines. Shapes that read clearly from across a room. "This season the silhouettes are quite exaggerated, with a strong focus on bold and structured forms," Gupta says. "You'll see high, rounded shoulders and broader shoulder lines that create a powerful presence. I was interested in exploring shapes that feel dominant and sculptural, allowing the garments to hold a strong visual identity on the body."

And yet, for all the architecture, the collection was never meant to be static. Movement was factored in from the start. "While designing, I was very conscious of how the garments would move on the body," he explains. "Even though the silhouettes are structured and sculptural, I wanted them to feel dynamic as the model walks. The idea was that the forms reveal themselves gradually through movement, making the shapes and structure more visible on the runway." There's something considered about that — an acknowledgment that clothes are not objects, they are things that happen in time.

If you asked Gupta to sum up 'The New Primitive' in three words, he'd give you: strength, structure, transformation. The first two are immediately legible in the work. The third is where the season's real conversation lives. Transformation, he says, reflects how the materials and shapes evolve into something unexpected through the design process — the idea that what you start with and what you end up with are not always the same thing, and that gap is where the collection found its character.

It is, ultimately, a collection built on instinct — on following what a fabric wants to do, on letting a composition from two centuries ago speak to the shape of a shoulder today. 'The New Primitive' simply holds its ground.

Source - Elle