Aneeth Arora is one of India’s most acclaimed clothing designers. Her influence is far reaching as she helps other designers revive a struggling textile industry by employing local artisans at Péro. Aneeth has won numerous honors in the field, including the British Council’s’ Young Creative Fashion Entrepreneur in 2011 and Vogue India’s first-ever Fashion Fund Award in 2012. However, becoming one of India’s most prominent fashion designers was a far off dream. The only thing Aneeth was certain was that she wanted to move from her hometown of Udaipur.
After graduating high school, Aneeth elected to move, against her mother’s wishes, to Mumbai to attend National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT). Following her time in Mumbai obtaining a masters degree in textile design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad in 2004, where she gradually developed an interest in fabrics and began to experiment with textiles, printing, weaving and dyeing.
A job in 2007, with a handmade writing and decorative paper company, allowed Aneeth to expand her creative flair and inspired her to enter the local Lakme fashion show in a youth category. “I created simple, hand-stitched clothing, which was not liked by the audience,” she says. But despite the underwhelming response, she soon received a call from Aza, a leading fashion house based in Mumbai, asking her to make a collection for them.
Her collaboration with Aza led to the creation of a self-named label in 2008 which she renamed “péro” the following year. The word means ‘to wear’ in Marwari, the local language of Rajasthan. “péro sounds simple, but that is exactly the essence of the brand,” Aneeth adds.
Aneeth’s life has been transformed since, from making 12 garments a month in 2008, to over a 1,000 with the help of a staff that has grown from two to 100. She has simultaneously been crucial in revitalizing the struggling local handmade textile industry by employing artisans who specialize in techniques such as hand-looming and dyeing. Her work as a designer follows in the Indian tradition of passing a piece from one hand to another – every person contributes their imprint to the final product.
By focusing on the details and the feeling of her home as inspiration, Aneeth Arora is bringing the world a perspective on India it has never seen before. In the quirky, elaborate details, you see a distinct personality emerge, not only of the designer, but also of the hands that made it, along with the cultures and histories that influenced her aesthetic.
