#ELLEExclusive: Injiri’s New Fall/Winter Collection Mīrāj Blurs The Line Between Dream And Design

Some collections make statements. Others invite reflection. Mīrāj, Injiri’s Fall-Winter 2025 collection, belongs to the latter. It moves gently, asking you to look closer at fabric, at form, and at the fleeting ways we perceive beauty.

For designer Chinar Farooqui, Mīrāj began as “a meditation on the slipperiness of perception.” The idea stemmed from the mirage itself, that in-between space where reality and imagination overlap. “It’s about the emotional landscapes we inhabit,” she says, “especially in moments of silence or introspection. The first feeling was that of standing still, watching time pool around architecture, objects, and gestures. The collection, in many ways, is our attempt to dress that feeling.”

A City of Dreams and Echoes

Set against the 16th-century backdrop of Fatehpur Sikri, the campaign mirrors the collection’s fascination with perception. The Mughal city, which was once a symbol of ambition and later of impermanence, became the perfect visual and philosophical anchor for Mīrāj. “Fatehpur Sikri is suspended in time,” Farooqui reflects. “It was built as a city of dreams and then abandoned, existing today as a monument to impermanence — a perfect metaphor for Mīrāj.”

The architectural cues are evident: Persian arches, Rajput pillars, and latticed screens are the elements that blur the distinction between inside and outside. In a similar way, the collection plays with transparency and structure, using light and layering to alter how each piece is seen. There’s movement in stillness here, as sheer and opaque textiles meet to create quiet, shifting contrasts.

Dressing the Mirage

Mīrāj examines how perception translates into design. The process itself was built on the idea of layering — not just in the garments, but in how they reveal themselves. “We worked with transparency and opacity, with sheers and denser weaves placed in conversation,” says Farooqui. Dual-sided fabrics and shadow motifs create depth, while silhouettes remain fluid and modular. Each piece seems to change character with light and motion, echoing the shifting nature of sight and memory.

A Language of Craft

Injiri’s signature has always been its deep commitment to handwoven textiles and Indian craft. With Mīrāj, that commitment expands to include reflection on material memory. Over the years, the studio had saved remnants of old handwoven fabrics, fragments too meaningful to discard. “Each one carried the memory of care and the hands that made it,” says Farooqui. “For Mīrāj, we transformed these into delicate neck details and floral embellishments. They weren’t just decorative, they were emotional.”

The result feels thoughtful and deliberate. The collection brings together tukdi patchwork from Jaisalmer, jamdani on wool and silk, bandhani and clamp-dye techniques on wool, and reimagined pashmina weaves with vibrant geometry. Each textile feels familiar but renewed — rooted in heritage yet open to reinterpretation.

The Stillness of Completion

When asked how she knows a collection like this is finished, Farooqui pauses before saying, “When the garments begin to speak back.” It’s an apt description for a process driven by intuition as much as structure. “When they start to hold emotion, to carry narrative without explanation, that’s when we feel a sense of completion.”

For Farooqui, Mīrāj ultimately lives in one word: reverie. It’s a collection that exists between clarity and blur, between past and present, reflective, but never nostalgic.

At its heart, Mīrāj reaffirms what Injiri stands for: craft as an evolving language, sustainability as a way of being, and beauty as something that moves — never still, never absolute.

As the Persian inscription on Fatehpur Sikri’s Buland Darwaza reads: “The world is a bridge, pass over it; build no houses upon it.” Mīrāj, too, is a passage, inviting us to cross, to look again, and to perceive differently.

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