Inside Rahul Mishra’s World of Intimate, Emotional Couture

Rahul Mishra’s design house stands as one of India’s most globally recognised couture labels in 2025, bridging intricate Indian craftsmanship with a contemporary, sustainable vision. From showing regularly at Paris Haute Couture Week to dressing brides from Delhi to Egypt, Rahul and his wife and creative partner, Divya Bhatt Mishra, continue to design with feeling, purpose, and poetry.

As part of the FDCI Manifest Wedding Weekend, Manifest caught up with the duo to talk inspiration, memorable brides, and the art of capturing emotion in embroidery.

In Conversation with Rahul and Divya Mishra

Manifest: What inspires you to create every day?

Divya Mishra: Every day is a new day for everyone. It's just the inspiration of watching new things around the studio, creating new stuff, working with the beautiful handicrafts and the hand embroideries, which we are known for in the brand. 

Rahul Mishra: I feel like it's also a great teamwork. Working with a really amazing team, which is full of energy. And how we discuss everything. Sometimes there might be some moments which are very heavy, and then there's a lot of laughter around. So, the idea is that we always look forward to coming to the office. It's a great place to work, and that is the biggest inspiration to create every day.

M: What is your favourite part about Indian Weddings?

DM: Indian weddings are so much fun. It's a time when the whole family gets together and has a celebration. We recently attended one of our cousins’ weddings, and it’s then you realise when you are with a close-knit family, what joy it brings to be around good food, good clothes, good jewellery, good people and lots of laughter.

RM: Often, nowadays, weddings are planned really, really well. There's a whole industry which is working together. So, it's a kind of large, but at the same time, very intimate experience, which makes Indian weddings something you remember for life.

M: Tell us about your favourite moment when you have dressed a bride?

RM: I think there are many, but some conversations stay really fresh in your mind. I remember there was one a few years back, where the bride was so clear. She had a complete mood board and a clear idea of what she wanted. She wanted to celebrate a barefoot wedding with the best hand embroidery, and I think that whole clarity, how the entire family got dressed. And they all wanted things to have. to fall into a certain way. I think all the videos, all the images, when we look back, they still give us joy. It was very sensible at the same time, a very intimate wedding. I think it also happened during COVID, and the entire family. We were privileged to dress the entire family, and it was a fun moment.

M: Is there an out-of-the-box request you got from a bride that you had fun executing?

DM: It's just a year or two ago, we had a very beautiful girl, Erica Hammond, who had come with the beautiful thought of getting married, not in a destination around the sea or a beautiful flowery place, but at the pyramids in Egypt! So that whole backdrop and the dress we designed around it were very special.

RM: It was a white and gold dress, which had a really large trail, and I think those images which we saw blew our minds. It was really beautiful to see the pyramids in the backdrop and they had taken over the entire city in a way for that day for the celebration. The kind of clarity Erica and her stylist had about choosing white and gold together, so that it looks as if a modern Egyptian or I would say modern global bride, who is portraying herself as an Egyptian girl would look like, was really beautiful. It was quite fun to walk through the process.

M: Has your approach to bridal couture evolved over the years?

DM: We have been regular at the Paris Fashion Week, and it's not that you can isolate from the Paris runway to the Indian runway, it's for both. The audience is the world citizen. It's the global fashionistas, we are all the same, right? Be it in Mumbai, Delhi, Paris or New York, there is no clear demarcation.

RM: Yeah, it’s just about changing or tweaking the silhouettes a little. Like in the case of the British bride who was getting married in Egypt, she knew what her requirements were in the same way this Indian bride knew. She wanted to celebrate the barefoot wedding with the best of comfort. Nowadays, young brides are evolving and they are deciding about every detail possible. It also allows us a lot of learning, I would say. And I respect this sense of confidence and sense of clarity that these brides exhibit. 

M: If you could design a bridal look inspired by a poem or painting. Which one would it be and why?

DM: There are so many, you can't count on one genre of style, painting, artists or poem. We are heavily inspired as designers with art. There's no particular genre or art movement per se, but there has been right from Henry Russo to Van Gogh. It's an amalgamation of artists, authors, and poems.

RM: I especially love Impressionism as a moment. Like how Monet very famously said in a quote that he is not trying to paint that river, the hut and the boat which you see in the painting and the bridge which you see in the painting; he is trying to paint the air around it. So, a lot of times, the idea of painting air around everything, the idea of creating feelings through clothes, is something which is closest to our hearts. So, we always try to capture feelings through our creations.

Inspired to get started on that wedding wardrobe moodboard? Head to the FDCI Manifest Wedding Weekend this August 2–3, 2025, at the Taj Palace, New Delhi, for the hottest fresh-off-the-runway couture looks and jewellery. Register here.