Delhi-based, award-winning, fashion designer Karan Torani’s fashion sensibility is inspired by his Sindhi roots. Be it his compelling campaigns or his fashion store, everything he does resonates with all things close to his heart. Karan collects fashion accessories and memories and by his own admission, is a hoarder and collector, who loves labelling, archiving, storing and treasuring his finds.   

  Topping the list are sunglasses, watches, books and other memorabilia. Among the rarest and most expensive things he possesses are original newspapers from s India’s freedom movement and actual prints from the first edition of  classics like Pakeezah and Mughal-e-Azam. “Many of my friends and people  who’ve seen these have asked me to auction but they’re too special for me to ever sell!” he says.  

 One destination that’s close to my heart is the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, in New Delhi. I’m not a particularly religious person but I do have vivid memories of visiting the Sikh temple with my family every Sunday morning as a child. We’d start with the Gurudwara visit, head for a meal of chole bhature to Defence Colony, and later in the evening, we will have a little picnic at India Gate. At the Gurudwara, the sarovar, fishes and the innate sense of selflessness in people at a place like that resonated with my spiritual side. Till date, strangers participating in the langar sewa and cleaning one another’s shoes, reinstates my faith in the existence of humanity and gives me hope for the future.   

My favourite corner of the house is my grandmother’s room! It’s a very cosy nook of the house – a small room with all her favourite things!   
 She passed away in March this year. So being in her room makes me feel closer to her. I love being in her bed and reading a book…. I grew up with her putting me to sleep every night with a new story.  
  
I am a sucker for Urdu poetry and ghazals and find it easier to share my feelings through poetry than usual sentences. The words of Bashir Badr Saheb, Gulzar Saab and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan comfort me and the spirituality and Sufi themes in them touch my soul. And, of course, I love coffee table books on textiles — I have over a thousand books on textiles in my office library.  

  My most precious vintage item has to be my mother’s Satranga Kani shawl gifted to her by her mother (my grandmother). It is a 40-year-old heirloom, which is a men’s shawl and much longer in size as my nani loved her dupattas and shawls to be longer as she was a tall woman. Much to my benefit, I ended up stealing their shawls whenever I got the chance… .This shawl is something I treasure, not only because it’s expensive but also because it’s been passed down generations.  

  The costliest textile/s in my workshop is a 300-year-old chandarva, which is also popularly known as the ‘textile of the goddess’. It is a six-square foot, square-shaped fabric adorned with pictures of  animals that goddesses ride or receive as sacrifice, devotees moving about performing service, riches on display, crowds, music being played, mountains being crossed, terrains being covered: everything presided over by the resplendent, dominant figure of a goddess.   

  I have a habit of buying and archiving vintage and heritage textiles from collectors across the country. I also happen to have a 20th century Paithani Sari with gold zari, which I acquired during my travels in Aurangabad. But my most prized possession has to be a vintage chintz choga from British Era India, which inspired me to curate and create the first chintz collection for Torani.  

  One Indian craft I am yet to master is Kancheevaram weaves. My amma (maternal grandmother) had a passion for collecting saris and many of her pieces have inspired me to take the route of building stories in fashion. The Kancheevaram in her wardrobe have always spoken to me, and I hope to create something special with them soon.  

My favourite fashion city is Rome. Not only because of the beauty in clothes but also the culture and history the city is soaked in. It feels like the most beautiful marriage of aesthetics and tradition. In every direction you wander, there’s a new monument waiting to tell you its own story of the land and its history.  

  My all-time favourite silhouette is the sari. It will always continue to reflect the need and imagination of its wearer. You recreate it for yourself, for this day and age, for this moment in time, and for who you are at this moment in time. A sari doesn’t have to be fussy, bound in dogmatic notions of identity. It can simply be what you want it to be.  

  Fashion items likely to be found on my bedside table are sunglasses and my watch — both vintage, one passed down by my father, and the other I bought from a thrift store in Paris.  

My guilty pleasure is retro Hindi cinema. I have re-watched every possible ’90s Indian movie over a 100 times! Music and cinema have a deep impact on the culture and essence of an era, and it makes me feel connected to my roots and who I was while growing up.  

  I feel inspired by forgotten Hindi cinema and personal photo albums of my family members. I feel often that as creators, we look outside for inspiration, instead of searching within. My forefathers hailed from Sindh (currently in Pakistan), which was earlier part of a larger Hindustan. The region was named after the river Sindhu (Indus), which flows through the land defining its borders and also supporting traditions of navigating waterways among the local people.  Even ‘Torani’, my brand, is a romantic ode to the vibrant fairs in Sindh that would bring together people from different communities, travellers, nomads and gypsies exchanging notes on culture, music and clothing under the same sky — a world where every cell would vibrate, where you would sing from the heart, and the light would shine from within.