Rejuvenating western styling with Indian touch-up

AMRTA is founded by Guneet Kondal while she was immersed in her Fashion Career.

After designing and producing women's apparel, décor and lifestyle products for Fashion retailers and Fashion Houses across the globe for 18 years, AMRTA is a long-awaited dream to recreate the Indian aesthetics enriched with her inspirations from travel and her experience from fashion industry.

She strongly believes that there is her community who will truly love and embrace the handwriting from Amrta.

Being born and raised in the Capital of India and a lover of culture, nature, romanticism and inspired by everything beautiful, AMRTA is an extension of Guneet's world, rooted in travel and inspired by creative and like-minded people.

Sharing about Amrta, Guneet shares, "Our idea is to create a piece for every occasion, every wardrobe and every celebration. We believe in creating occasion wear that is ideal for when you want to dance your heart out to when you feel like retreating in nature's cocoon. Our aim is to create season less clothing for all year round, and for every mood."

Amrta is a dream that she had as a child. She was always passionate about designing and would make sketches. Being inspired by Ritu Beri and Rohit Bal who were fashion icons in her growing years, she further did her masters from NIFT, Delhi to pursue her dream.

She adds, "For almost 2 decades I worked with brands like Stella Mc Cartney, Ann Taylor, Antik Batik, Anthropologie, Next and many other global fashion retailers and finally took the leap for my true calling in 2020.

The brand was born out of the desire to make women feel beautiful, sophisticated and powerful, with timeless garments that are impeccably tailored. With a focus on craftsmanship, the entire collection is designed and made in India.

Our pieces have Indian craftsmanship remodeled into contemporary silhouettes. We intend to create soft romantic timeless classics affordable luxury and offer bespoke tailoring."

Their classics are slow fashion, pieces to treasure. Guneet believes that in India, we either have very expensive designer brands or more casual and young fashion.

There is still a huge product and price gap as we don't have such hand beaded contemporary bespoke clothing at affordable prices and customization which is where we want to position ourselves.

Being started almost near to the pandemic, Amrta had its own challenges. Sharing about the same, Guneet shares, "We began in January 2020 and due to covid we had to shut in between and hence retaining labor force at that point of time was challenging, but we managed to sail through the time and restarted in September 2020.

At personal level creating that work life balance is another challenge which I am yet to come over and there is a sacrifice In every dream that we pursue but when we have passion and drive in our bones we shall see it all through."

According to Guneet, sustainability is not only limited to using sustainable fabrics but it needs to be running in the entire eco system of one's business model.

"We aim to keep the complete product and supply chain as sustainable as possible.

Beginning from the use of natural and sustainable fabrics, chemical free and azo free dying, trims with azo free certifications, we ensure fair practices for our workforce, our workshop has all LED lights which is one of many eco- friendly choices that we have made.

Finally, the Packaging it comes with zero plastic, "we make ecofriendly fabric packaging bags and for couriers we are using recycle courier bags," adds Guneet.

They are a team of 10, comprising of 2 embroidery artisans, 4 tailors; skilled to make high fashion products, 1 pattern maker, 1production coordinator, designer and a merchandiser.

They have collaborated with Nushrat Barucha recently and are also in talks with a few like Shilpa Shetty, as she carries whatever she wears with a lot of grace.

"The pandemic impacted the industry and space we were looking at heavily.

People had stopped buying and travelling and hence the sales are impacted heavily.

However, we do look at it from a brighter perspective, there is a strong sense of sustainability and people are more conscious of their footprints and they are moving towards slow fashion which is what our brand stays true to," ends the designer and entrepreneur.