For eleven years, CORD has been building its own language, one that has become increasingly easy to spot in the Indian fashion landscape. Hand-smocked details, painterly prints, embroidery, unusual combinations, and clothes designed for real ease have all become part of the CORD vocabulary. Founded by Neha Singh and Pranav Guglani, the label has grown from a two-person operation into a much larger world of stores, teams and new markets, while holding on to the curiosity that shaped it in the first place.
Now, after eleven years of collections, experiments and evolving ideas, CORD is doing something it has never done before: putting its world on a stage.
For Autumn/Winter 2027, Singh and Guglani will present the brand’s first-ever fashion show at Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium. This is a major new chapter for a label with a well-established visual language, and the collection is designed to make that language feel bigger, stranger, and more theatrical than before.
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AW26 begins with a look back, but this isn’t a straightforward trip through the CORD archives. When Singh and Guglani revisited the last eleven years, they found certain ideas that were relatable, nostalgic and the ones that made their brand: handwork, embroidery, smocking, painterly prints, nostalgia and, perhaps most importantly, clothes that are comfortable and easy to live in.
The question was what to do with them now.
“We didn’t want to recreate the past,” says Singh. “We wanted to revisit those elements and see what they meant to us today.” Guglani describes the collection as a conversation between CORD’s past and present. They went back through old collections, images, fabrics and techniques, finding pieces they had almost forgotten about and discovering that some of those ideas still had plenty to say.
That process gives AW26 its layered quality. Hand smocking, embroidery, appliqué, kantha, beadwork, block and screen printing and CORD’s painterly prints all return, but they aren’t being reproduced for the sake of familiarity. Each technique has been reconsidered according to what it can bring to the story. Smocking introduces softness, hand embroidery and kantha bring irregularity, while appliqué and beadwork push the collection into more fantastical territory.
The prints, meanwhile, have always occupied an important place within CORD. Singh and Guglani have treated them almost like paintings or fragments of a story, and for AW26, that idea becomes even more literal. Familiar motifs are reworked and placed in different contexts, becoming fragments of memory. “The handwork also gives the clothes a sense of the person who made them,” Singh says. “We like that you can still see the human hand in the finished piece.”
There is plenty here that will feel familiar to anyone who has followed CORD over the years: the craft, the colour, the texture, the prints and the ease. But AW26 gives those codes a little more room to misbehave. Wool, velvet and silk meet cotton and linen, while the silhouettes become larger and more theatrical. The clothes are still designed to be lived in, a principle the founders have held onto from the beginning, but this time they are being allowed to occupy a more dramatic world.
“We’ve allowed ourselves to be a little more dramatic this time,” says Guglani.
It is a small admission, but an important one. CORD has always had a strong point of view. AW26 is about seeing what happens when that point of view is pushed further.
That evolution mirrors the journey of the brand itself. When Singh and Guglani started CORD, it was the two of them making instinctive decisions and figuring things out as they went. Today, there is a larger team, stores and multiple markets involved in bringing the work to life. What hasn’t changed is the way they look for inspiration. A piece of fabric, an old photograph, something seen while travelling, a colour, a building or even an ordinary object can still set an idea in motion. And through all the growth, comfort has remained non-negotiable. “We still want people to live in the clothes, not just wear them for a photograph,” says Singh.
Their creative partnership has evolved, too. Eleven years of working together has taught Singh and Guglani that collaboration doesn’t require them to agree on everything. In fact, some of CORD’s most interesting ideas emerge from the space between their different perspectives. One might be thinking about the larger visual picture, while the other is focused on the garment itself: how it moves, how it feels and whether someone will actually want to wear it.
“We challenge each other quite a lot,” Guglani says. “Sometimes too much!” Singh adds.
The back and forth is part of how CORD has found its common language. Their individual creative instincts have become clearer over time, even as their shared vision has become more defined.
For AW26, that conversation between past and present, instinct and refinement, clothing and storytelling extends into the show’s concept.
Titled ‘And Then the Clouds Were Beneath Us’, the presentation follows a young boy through a world shaped by his memories of his mother. She appears almost as a dreamlike figure, guiding him through different worlds, memories and emotions as reality begins to overlap with imagination.
The story grew out of a fascination with childhood and the way our earliest understanding of the world is shaped by the people around us. Singh and Guglani approached the show almost like making a film, storyboarding the movement, the different moments and the ways the world would change around the boy. Their last few campaigns show a very similar approach too.
“We wanted the audience to feel like they were entering his memory rather than simply watching a collection walk past them,” says Guglani.
That means CORD’s debut isn’t going to behave like a conventional runway. Models, performers, music, movement, lighting and set design will come together at Kamani Auditorium, turning the presentation into something closer to theatre and a living dreamscape. The clothes become characters within the story, and the setting gives Singh and Guglani an opportunity to show the CORD universe from a completely different perspective.
The designers aren’t interested in making an experience where guests simply look at a garment, decide whether they like it and move on. They want the audience to stay with the world for a little longer. Maybe what lingers is a particular garment, a piece of music, an image from the set or an unexpected memory of childhood.
“If someone leaves with a particular image, a piece of music, a garment or even a memory of their own childhood, that would mean a lot to us,” says Singh.
After eleven years, CORD could easily have settled into the language it has already established. Instead, AW26 suggests that Singh and Guglani are still interested in asking what else it can become. They are curious about craft, storytelling, travel, objects and spaces, and about how far the label can extend beyond clothing while retaining the qualities that make it recognisable.
“Eleven years can make you feel like you should have everything figured out,” Singh says. “But we don’t think that’s necessarily the point.”
The first eleven years were about discovering what CORD could become. Its first fashion show is the beginning of seeing just how expansive that world can be.
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