Yellow is having its moment under the sun. Butter yellow ruled last year, and this year too, the hue has heated things up on the red carpet at the Oscar Awards and Emmy Awards and back home, stars have rocked colour. Kareena Kapoor Khan went vibrant in her mustard-yellow anarkali suit by Anamika Khanna and recently. Tamannaah Bhatia also took to Instagram to share photos of herself in a stunning, bright yellow Torani sari that Karan Torani calls, "teekha Basanti."
In a chat with Manifest, Karan Torani takes us into the sari with its old-world romance, why he loves the chakora on the pallu and his fashion conversations with good friend and muse, Tamannaah Bhatia.
The Sunehra Amaltas Saree is crafted in pure, featherlight georgette, allowing it to move with an almost cinematic ease. It feels fluid, dreamy and quietly sensual. The colour is what we call teekha Basanti, the incandescent yellow of amaltas blossoms at the height of summer. It is brighter than turmeric, warmer than sunlight and unmistakably Indian.
It is absolutely classic Torani. Chintz sarees have remained an enduring part of our design language since our first collection in 2018. They hold everything we continually return to as a house: colour, nostalgia, romance and an unabashed celebration of India. The compositions may evolve, but the painstaking artistic process and the love behind them remain unchanged.
For Tamannaah, we paired the saree with a custom off-shoulder choli in pure raw silk. Its clean, sculpted form brought a contemporary femininity and sensuality to the timelessness of the drape. It felt like old-world romance interpreted through a younger, more glamorous silhouette.
The saree is alive with Torani’s signature chintz, with bold, generous florals blooming freely across the body and continuing onto the border. Historically, Indian chintz was not merely ornamentation. It was a painted garden carried upon cloth. We wanted to retain that same sense of abundance and storytelling.
Every motif begins by hand at the Torani Art Foundation, our in-house artistic practice. Our artists collectively draw and paint each element across paper, canvas and textile before the artwork is scanned, developed and transferred onto fabric. Therefore, even when the final expression is a print, it continues to carry the memory of the hand: the instinct of a brushstroke, the gentle irregularity of pigment and the intimacy of something created slowly.
The borders are further articulated with embroidered chevrons, delicate lace and kachcha-dhaaga resham work, bringing texture and intricacy to an otherwise effortless drape.
Yellow certainly feels like the colour of the season, but for us it is also far more eternal than a trend. It is the colour of haldi, marigolds, ripened fields, summer afternoons and celebration. It carries an instinctive warmth and optimism within the Indian imagination.
Our teekha Basanti is particularly joyful. It does not whisper or retreat. It enters a room with light. There is something youthful and glamorous about it, yet it remains deeply rooted in the visual memory of India. On Tamannaah, it felt almost like a sunlit love letter to the timeless heroines of Indian cinema: dreamy, bold and romantic, while belonging entirely to the present.
The pallu becomes a painting of its own. At its heart sits the chintz chakora, held almost like a precious portrait within an ornate frame of florals.
In Indian poetry and folklore, the chakora is imagined as a bird eternally enamoured of the moon, gazing towards it, longing for it and, in some tellings, living upon its light. It has therefore come to represent desire, devotion and the exquisite ache of loving something from afar. Within the saree, the chakora becomes a quiet romantic pause amid all the colour and movement. It is a small story of longing carried upon the shoulder.
I have always loved the idea that clothing can hold narratives that reveal themselves slowly. From a distance, the pallu appears lush and decorative. When observed closely, it becomes an intimate painting about love, beauty and remembrance.
Over the last two and a half or three years, Tamannaah’s and my relationship has evolved from that of collaborators to close friends, and now she feels almost like family to me. With that evolution has come a deep sense of trust and understanding. Our conversations around fashion are rarely transactional. They are instinctive and personal. She may tell me how she is feeling or the frame of mind she currently inhabits, and I try to create or select something that elevates that spirit without altering it.
For this look, she told me that she simply wanted to feel like herself. Despite having spent nearly two decades in cinema, she said that few garments make her feel as confident and comfortable as a saree. She did not want to feel overwhelmed by the clothes or as though she had to perform for them. She wanted ease, femininity and the freedom to inhabit the look completely.
That thought stayed with me. While she is a muse and I naturally want to express a distinct design identity through her, it is equally important that she wears the clothes. The clothes must never wear her. The Amaltas Saree was already a classic piece from our line, but we created the off-shoulder blouse especially for her, introducing the femininity and sensuality she was seeking while preserving the timelessness of the saree.
When she finally wore it, it felt like the perfect meeting of both our worlds: rooted but never bound, glamorous without being burdened and sensual without losing its softness. More than her simply loving the look, I think she recognised herself within it. For me, that is always the greatest success of a garment.