In Conversation With Prabal Gurung: Breaking Rules, Never Grace

My first introduction to Nepalese American fashion designer Prabal Gurung was not very long ago, in 2025, when he dressed the hugely popular Punjabi singer and artist Diljit Dosanjh for the Met Gala. While I may have been late to discovering the fascinating and intricate brilliance of Gurung’s work, the world certainly isn’t, and for that, I am grateful.

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The 46-year-old designer, born in Singapore and raised between Nepal and India before moving to the United States, launched his eponymous label in 2009. Since then, he has gone on to become the creative director of Japanese jewellery house Tasaki in 2017 and a co-founder of the House of Slay. From Michelle Obama, Shakira, Zendaya, Priyanka Chopra, Oprah Winfrey, and Lady Gaga to Alia Bhatt, Gurung has dressed some of the most influential women in the world — a reach that has made his name instantly recognised across continents.

In his latest offering, Walk Like a Girl (HarperCollins India), the cover designed just as thoughtfully as his line of clothes, Gurung opens a window into his complex yet deeply inspiring journey from a common Nepali boy to an internationally renowned fashion designer. At a time when popular culture continues to glorify brute force and exaggerated masculinity, Prabal Gurung, in his book, argues for something quieter, and far more radical. Femininity, he suggests, is not an aesthetic or a provocation, but a way of being rooted in accountability, vulnerability, and emotional intelligence.

Speaking at the Exide Kolkata Literary Meet held at Alipore Museum in Kolkata between 22–26 January 2026, with senior journalist, commentator, and author Shefalee Vasudev, Gurung reflected on how creativity and artistry remain some of the few spaces where such conversations can exist freely, where softness is not mistaken for weakness.

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Right before Gurung went up on stage for his session, I sat down with him. Flaunting a deep-cut tank paired with a crisp, relaxed beige suit, Gurung opened up about finding his voice in New York, embracing femininity as strength, and the ways we rewrite our own stories. Around us, fans were already gathering, asking for autographs, snapping photos, and of course, wondering aloud about the secret to his flawless skin.

ELLE: Was insisting on your name one of the earliest ways you learned to stand ypur ground, before fashion, before, visibility, simply by refusing to shrink yourself linguistically?

Prabal: Unlike you, whose name is Chaitanya and who goes by Chai by choice, I didn’t really have that option. Mine isn’t a very long name, so I couldn’t say, “Hi, I’m Chai.” But jokes aside, I think it was something that was instilled in me, and in my siblings, by my mother. My mother’s name is Durga. My sister is Kumudini. My brother is Pravesh. And mine is Prabal. My parents really thought about our names, about why they mattered and what they carried. So, I had to honour that. I couldn’t make it smaller.

And very often, especially from the other side of the pond, you’re expected to learn their names, to say them properly, while they casually butcher and murder ours. For me, insisting on my name became the smallest, easiest way of saying, you have to see me as a whole person. You can’t take me in bits and pieces. 

To tell you the truth, at the time, I didn’t even realise it was a kind of resistance. It just felt natural. If I can make the effort to learn your language, which isn’t my first language, and your culture, then the least you can do is meet me halfway. That’s really how it began.

ELLE: You have said you came to New York to find your voice. Looking back, do you think your voice emerged because you felt safe, or because you learned how to survive without safety?

Prabal: I had to fend for myself, literally, right from the start. When you don’t belong to the majority, when you don’t fit into this very narrow idea of what a heteronormative man is supposed to look like or behave like, survival becomes the priority and I was constantly navigating that in every situation, even after moving to New York and in my early days. 

In moment like that, you really only have two choices. You either shrink yourself, or you decide to show up as who you are. Not in a spiky or aggressive way, but honestly. That’s how it happened for me. I also learned very early not to make my worth dependent on someone else’s validation. That became a tool for survival.
New York played a big role in that. It’s a city apart from the rest of America in many ways. It values individuality. And for those who didn’t get me, I wasn’t really fighting anymore. I was just like, fine, I may not be your cup of tea, but eventually if you’ll come around, we will have a conversation then. 

Part of this confidence comes from where I come from. From our continent, from South Asia, from our cultures, our stories, our mythology. We’ve seen so much resilience and feminine strength. Grace has always been a leading force for us. So, I’ve always believed it’s just a matter of time. You keep doing the work, consistently, and people will show up. Safety will also find your way sooner than later.

ELLE: Speaking of femininity, and how it shaped the way you learned to move through the world, before it became something you wore with pride or intention, what did femininity mean to you?

Prabal: Femininity was just the only thing I knew. I looked at my mother, my sister, my aunts, the women around me – and they all inspired me in their own ways. Then I looked at films, at heroines in Bollywood and Hollywood, and I was instinctively drawn to them. I was fascinated by the women because I found men in those stories very one-dimensional. The hero gets angry, saves someone, fights, and wins. Women were, arguably, more layered, more interesting and that’s true for women in real life too, not just in fiction or on the screen. And I loved that. Femininity felt natural to me, and eventually over the years, I learnt to wear it with a lot of pride. 

ELLE: In the book, there’s a sense of restraint and carefulness rather than overt defiance. Was that a conscious choice, especially in resisting expectations to explain or perform pain?

Prabal: A little, yes. What I was very sure I didn’t want to do, which the West often asks of us, especially South Asians or just anybody from this part of the world, is to lean too heavily into poverty or pain as a kind of offering, almost for someone else’s salvation. I didn’t want to do that.

 At the same time, I also didn’t want to overexplain. I believe that people who understand nuance don’t need everything spelled out. You don’t have to overwrite or over-tell for the point to land. Sometimes it’s enough to let people feel the sense of things. At the end of the day, I wanted to tell the story as I know it, in my own way, without giving in to any narrative imposed by someone else and I hope when people read that, they see and understand why I did it.

ELLE: The book invites readers to rewrite their stories. But rewriting often requires distance, safety, and time. Do you think there were earlier versions of yourself who simply weren’t ready to tell this story yet?

Prabal: One hundred percent. Absolutely.

It needed time. It needed maturity. It needed for me to actually go through things and arrive at a place where I wasn’t hardened, but where I had enough grace, dignity, and humility to still look at life, my work, and myself with joy. That was important to me.

What I didn’t want was to turn into a cynical person, because that’s often what the world expects of us. To harden, to give up softness, to lose tenderness. I didn’t want that. I don’t resonate with that idea. As I mentioned earlier on, softness and femininity were all I knew. And over the course of growing up, and living in Nepal, India and America, and understand the world, I now had choices. I had options. And I still chose them… softness and femininity. The moment I realised I was truly comfortable in that choice, that’s when I knew I was ready to tell this story.

ELLE: You occupy many roles today: a designer, an activist, and a cultural figure. Do you ever feel pressure to show up as exemplary or fully resolved, rather than simply human which can also be contradictory or unresolved?

Prabal: No, I don’t. I’ve never felt pressure to be anyone other than myself, and that also means accepting that I’m not perfect all the time. There are days when I’m tired, when I’ve had a hard day, when I’m not the greatest friend or the most present sibling, and I’m okay with that. I allow myself the full range of emotions: the pain, the fatigue, the pause.

If I can treat myself as human, with all of that complexity, then I’m able to see others the same way. For me, it’s as simple as that. I don’t feel the pressure to be anything more than human and that comes with a whole range of human emotions and experiences – the good as well as the bad.

ELLE: Now that the memoir exists as a fixed object in the world, do you feel more seen or more exposed? And what has it been like to let go of control over a story that once belonged only to you?

     Prabal: Neither, actually! I didn’t write this book for myself, or exactly for the means to be more ‘seen’, and I didn’t write it with the fear of exposure either. I wrote it to share a story so that someone else might feel empowered to share theirs.

We live in a world where stories are constantly fed to us, and over time, we can lose track of our own narrative. My hope is that when people read this book, they feel moved to say, I want to tell my story too. It’s as simple as that.

If there’s any strength I have, it’s that I don’t feel the need to please everyone. I knew this book wouldn’t resonate with all readers, and that’s okay. I’ve had friends respond in very different ways, some surprised, some confused, especially around ideas of masculinity or femininity. But the book isn’t trying to explain or justify any of that. It’s simply telling the story as it is and that story happens to be my own life story.

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