It is always fascinating to see a designer carry one vision from the peak of Couture to ready-to-wear, with its demands of practical production and commercial viability. In July, Anamika Khanna opened India Couture Week with a masterly display of homegrown skill. Three months later, during Paris Fashion Week, her signature crosses the planet in AK|OK, the contemporary label she steers with her twin sons. Based in Kolkata, she left classical dance and painting for fashion and in 2007 became the first Indian to stage a show in Paris. Almost twenty years later, she is back. The world has changed radically, her care for the well made has only deepened.
AK|OK is the more accessible line she founded in 2021 with her sons, Viraj, a visual artist, and Vishesh, a designer who learned from Savile Row tailors. The name joins her initials, AK, to a reassurance first voiced by the twins. For her, AK|OK is about giving yourself permission to be exactly who you are. Its starting point is Indian craft, its result a relaxed yet refined wardrobe. Developed in partnership with Reliance Brands, it is sold across the country and at Selfridges in London.
Much of the collection plays in neutral tones, from an oversized white shirt dress slit high on the leg to a long slip dress. Cream satin trousers and a long coat bear plants and landscapes that fade in earth tones like fragments of a worn fresco. A matching shirt and trousers printed with ochre and blue dashes softens the palette further. Red cuts in as the sharpest accent, with an asymmetric chiffon dress, a sleeveless top above indigo jeans bursting with motifs down a single leg, and a bandeau above a skirt tiled in red and grey. Sky-blue trousers ripple with wave-like stitching, and a cropped grey jacket sits above wide satin trousers.
Building a brand out of India that means something to the world has always been her mission. Paris, the international stage where the whole industry gathers, is a natural home for that ambition, and she steps onto it as a family. Today the family carries it forward together, roots included.
