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<h1 class="left">To think the genesis of naming the contemporary fashion label after pure romance would not be incorrect. When Amrita Khanna, a fashion graduate selling vintage in Hauz Khas village met Gursi Singh, an advertising major, they didn’t intend to sell fashion per se. Falling for each other quick and hard, they had a simple desire to create with one another. Ten years and two daughters later, their labour of love, Lovebirds, is one of the few Indian contemporary labels to have made a mark globally. Stark lines, playful shapes, Lovebirds encompasses all that’s Indian and modern in its seasonless, timeless approach to clothing. You could feel like being in a Lovebirds dress whatever occasion or time of the year. The brand sells identity and no false hopes or aspirations. It champions Indianness without hiding behind ornate embroideries and luxe textiles.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Fashion was a chance encounter in their journey together as partners. Gursi and Amrita (more often and affectionately known as Bunky), interject each other’s sentences, roll eyes, and a decade into marriage, continue to be in awe of their partner’s genius. It’s endearing and unbelievable to watch at once. What follows is dirty’s inquiry into their first collection and their creative process.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Gursi: You’ve seen us from day one, right?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Rujuta: Yes I think, pretty much. Do guys still have the old store?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: No, not anymore.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Rujuta: So let’s start from the very beginning.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: This collection (debut) was launched in 2014 late September.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: Did you guys study together?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: No. I studied in Chandigarh, I did my masters in mass communication and I did not study fashion at all. But I have always been into art, so I joined advertising right after graduation and I became an art director. Fashion came later, when I met Bunky.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Rujuta: How was it for you Amrita?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: I was always into fashion. I went to Pearl and then went to the London College of Fashion and continued to stay there for a long time. Eventually I moved back and started this vintage store in a tiny little corner of Hauz Khas village called Lovebirds. I think my first interview was with Vogue.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: Gursi, you said that you entered fashion because of Amrita, what was that trajectory like?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: When we met, it wasn’t about work. We fell in love.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: It had nothing to do with work.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: We didn’t partner for work, we partnered for life.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: No, before that, we met in Hauz Khas and I was opening another vintage store in Meherchand and I asked Gursi.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: At that time I had quit advertising and I started...</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: Helping people! For free!</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: Well I wanted to do something other than advertising for Coca Cola or Nestlè so I had started doing my own thing. And then I started helping people design spaces… while she was setting up her space. She had a vintage store, we didn’t want to work together really.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Rujuta: Does that get intense sometimes? Being partners, parents, co-workers together?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: We get that question a lot and I wonder, is there something wrong?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: Maybe its weird for people like, what the fuck are you doing!</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Rujuta: People have shared interests in many aspects with their partners but with work that’s rare I guess?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: When we work together, it's a lot. Constantly exchanging ideas, talking about art and fashion and everything else.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: But sometimes we react to each other at work in a way we otherwise won’t. And we know it's only because we are at work, it's allowed, but otherwise it wouldn’t!</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: So when did you start making clothes?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: In a year of seeing each other, we were living together already. She was refurbishing vintage clothing.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: I wasn’t travelling as much anymore. Before that, I would collect vintage from small markets in Europe. For me to always be travelling and sourcing vintage got tough and so I started creating a few pieces of my own and that’s when I asked Gursi to work on this together.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: I remember we used to spend entire days in the fabric markets. Even now Amrita knows some really interesting markets in Delhi. So even though I started working with her, I was working on my own projects as well and it took me some time to understand how the backend of fashion works. It took us 3-4 months to make a collection. Being an art director, who is so inspired by architecture, my sketching is very linear, boxy. So everything we made then was super oversized and boxy. It also looked inspired by vintage clothing.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: Lace and poplin, lace, high-waist skirts, grid cutwork, very wide at the bottom. We are still making those high-waisted skirts.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: We still make those high-waist skirts and people are still enjoying those skirts. We have stood with the idea of timelessness since day one and it's going to be 10 years for the brand. Nothing makes us happier.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: This collection was sold in Bombay. Aishwarya Nair, Anaita Shroff Adajania, Vasundhara Goenka were some of our first buyers. Then we started with Ensemble. Your first collection is always close to you. The way it was made and shot. Preeti Dhata wore our pieces. Jimmy Granger shot the collection.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: We made a short film for which we won an award at Lakme Fashion Week. The point I was coming to was that if we had a vision to make a business, I don’t know how differently we would have seen it. But we made it purely out of partnership, just to create things together. It was a true emotion. We made this collection as one of the things we would do with one another.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">Rujuta: But you also wanted to show this one-off collection at Lakme?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: With my marketing background I am very good at putting things out there.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: When we made this collection, we were going off on a backpacking trip to Sri Lanka for a month. Gursi made sure he emailed the collection to everyone before leaving.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: Whenever we got network in Sri Lanka, we got an email asking for more details about the collection and that’s when Lakme approached us for the show. Luckily we were encouraged. If that had not been the case we would have absolutely done something else.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: At what point did you get serious about the business?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: After the first couple of years.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: It was quite challenging at first. The kind of clothing we were making, it was difficult to convince the audience. We did a lot of trade shows. I was in Paris when she was popping our first child. It was tough to be out there selling a collection when I was having a baby back in Delhi. But we are hardworking people and we dragged our bags and did what we had to.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Rujuta: And at some point you developed a distinct aesthetic. I remember last year, all anyone wore was Lovebirds.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: We placed ourselves really well last year. We realised that having a show every year really translates to people looking for those pieces.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: The show we did last year was just after the pandemic ended. It was probably the first thing the industry came together for.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: The evening after the launch of the Mumbai store at Wesley Church with dirty was fun. Especially the afterparty at the Kala Ghoda wine room.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: Do you know how many glasses were broken that night?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Rujuta: How many?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: More than 60!</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: Which can’t be possible unless people were just throwing glasses!</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: I was shocked when I heard that number.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Rujuta: The store itself acts more than a store. Tell us about that.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: When we saw the space we saw the history that came along with it. When we approached Saurbh who designed the space, we decided not to change anything about it.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: The first three months went in just restoring everything. When we saw the walls completely bare, we thought it was a good idea for there to be art hanging on it.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: And also make it a space for lots of open dialogue. We love fashion but we are happy to witness spaces where our creativity evolves. The door is always open.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Rujuta: What are some of the harsh truths about fashion you’d want to share with up and coming talent?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: The business side of fashion is very hard. To put ideas on paper is not. Making a collection is not. But to put it out there and sell it in the market takes a lot of work. The gaps in the market where there’s necessity is becoming thinner. So to find a niche for yourself is that much tougher.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: Achieving the best quality is very challenging. You just have to keep at it. You struggle everyday.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: These days our struggles are more organisational. But for the younger generation sustainability is a bigger challenge, how to make less but well. Finding good talent to be a part of the team is a big challenge. People don’t want to learn.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: How did winning Vogue Talents help you?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: We got approached by Sara Maino of Vogue Italia.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: We were in Kashmir then.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: The collection was inspired by Phirans and it was a winter collection which eventually won us the award.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: I was pregnant then!</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: Bunky decided to pop our child earlier hahaha.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Rujuta: Where did you retail after?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: It gave us a push and made it easier for us to approach a showroom in Milan. We were at Yoox and 10 Corso Como then. That was when we went global.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: Working with the international market is very different.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">Rujuta: What would you say is the Indian designer’s USP in a global space?</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: We were speaking to Matches last week and they were keen to understand our stance on sustainability. It's interesting how this is catching up globally but contemporary Indian fashion has always been largely sustainable. It’s an older conversation in the Indian ecosystem. There are many brands in the country who have been taking tremendous steps in that direction.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Amrita: Earlier when we would talk about it in a global context it didn’t matter to the buyers, but that has completely changed. They want us to share more about the processes.</h1>

<h1 class="left">Gursi: The Indian contemporary scene is more forward in that space, it’s just they haven’t been able to put themselves in the global space but that is slowly changing too.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Rujuta: What informs your body of work? What are your working styles?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: I am the dreamer, she is the practical one. We were just editing the collection that’s going abroad and she is tough with the details, but she is also easy to convince. She plays the devil’s advocate. She does the costing, sell through. The analysis goes to her. Though we both design together, she has a deeper understanding of the business. I am more into design and marketing.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: You can tell Gursi what you think but he does what he wants!</h1>

<h1 class="right">Rujuta: What were your personal experiments in style like?</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: I was always styling myself. A lot of vintage, big shoulders, oversized jackets. I had a giant old vintage dress.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: The first time I met her, she had big hair, lots of jewellery, and a short leather skirt. She had really interesting Junya pieces. I am saving them for my daughters.</h1>

<h1 class="right">Amrita: I grew up with my brother (Aman Khanna of Claymen) and he influenced my style. We grew up near Nagaland and style was coming out of everywhere!</h1>

<h1 class="right">Gursi: She has a great eye. She’s not an easy person to shop with. She’ll only pick one special thing and keep it for years. She’s very good at styling and a piece will always look fresh on her. I am not as good at styling, I take much longer to get dressed though I don’t look like it!</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">Rujuta: What are your daughters like?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: The only question Bunky gets is, “why are you so stylish?” They say “none of our friends’ moms are stylish, so when you come to pick us up please don’t dress up.”</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: And I tell them there’s no way I won’t dress up, get used to it.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: Their struggle is they want to belong to the other world. The day they play dress up, they dress like Bunky and go through all her stuff.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: Getting dressed every morning is a struggle.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Gursi: We’ve made lots of stuff for them, they don't care. Just this morning Dali complained about the armhole of a dress we made for her. They are our biggest critics.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Amrita: It’s ok, it's fine.</h1>

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