With roots at the Fashion Institute of Technology and armed with stints at Calvin Klein and DVF, Vaish is like that perfectly balanced cocktail of East meets West—shaken, not stirred. Vaish blends Western precision with Indian craftsmanship to create subtly powerful menswear. Each piece showcases a mastery of layering and unique textiles, resulting in outfits that are as effortlessly luxurious as they are refined—perfect for grooms seeking an understated yet powerful look.
What according to you are three essential elements of Indian wedding wear for men? Clothes that stand out in the crowd full of mindless, heavily ornate, or oversimplified. But it doesn’t mean one has to look like a peacock, it can just be a small detail, buttons, cut or even accessories which can make the outfit stand out and make you look really cool. Elegantly Luxurious garments are made with rich natural fabrics which are far more comfortable and elegant. It should be modern and current.
How do you strike a balance between traditional Indian aesthetics and modern tailoring? It’s more like traditional hand-tailoring techniques with modern Indian aesthetics. I love our Indian heritage of embroideries, fabrics and hand tailoring. That’s something I learned to appreciate while working at Rohit Bal. It has the warmth and the richness like nothing else, but having said that I feel there is always room to add new creations which can have that richness and also be relevant to the current times.
Can you share the story or process behind some of your favourite pieces that embody intricate details like hand embroidery and custom textures? In the current digital world where everything is available on the internet to copy we design our garment keeping the tailoring or embroidery techniques in mind which can’t be copied easily even with the garment in hand. We developed a special metal lace covered with thread which had the shine and softness to make any garment stand out but had to be hand embroidered with the most intricate technique. We also get our own metal embroidered material made to go with our subtle and rich aesthetics. Since I learned the fine art of Hand Tailoring in Naples, I wanted to blend a bit of that in our Indian wear which we did by adding the Neapolitan wine glass patch pockets on a classic Bandhgala with hand-stitched buttonholes.
Could you tell us about your fabric selection process and how you ensure it complements the overall structure and design? Since we experiment a lot with different cuts and silhouettes the way a fabric falls is the most important and also the most challenging part for us to achieve the right look and comfort. That’s why wherever we can we try and get our fabric woven with heavier twisted yarns and we also play a lot with mixing either different qualities of silk or even silk with cotton or cotton with linen etc to achieve the right weight and look. Getting good new textures is one of the trickiest and the most effective things to achieve as it can save us the need to do much surface ornamentation.
The importance of ‘wearability’ in wedding attire has only grown in modern times. How do you balance this with the grandeur that wedding aesthetics always demand? The wedding attire is in general required to be grandeur and should be too but the sherwani does not necessarily have to be heavy for that. The accessories that go with it like the stole, cummerbund, safa, necklace, shoes etc can be made much more ornate and striking to achieve the Grand look. I also love the traditional Banarasi Brocade sherwani. When well styled it can look very modern, and opulent and be more wearable than the heavily embroidered ones.
What are some unique tailoring details or silhouettes that you think set Dhruv Vaish’s creations apart in the Indian wedding wear landscape? Our hybrids are one of the most popular garments where we give the look of a Nehru Jacket and a kurta in one garment or even a bandhgala, sherwani and flared kurta mixed all in a single garment and many more. This usually involves a lot of careful layering of different fabrics and the use of seams and darts in odd places but in a way that they look like design details.
Some other popular details that we use are very fine horizontal pintucks, ombré shading, high neck without collar, curved pockets etc complimented with a lot of layering. Most of this can only be achieved with highly skilled hand tailoring.
