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I remember coming across Rohit Mane’s Instagram and feeling something close to envy — the good kind. The kind that makes you pause mid-scroll and think, I would wear that. His pieces felt sculptural, almost sacred in their precision, and I went through his page the way you read a sentence you want to understand — slowly, and then all over again. What I felt wasn't quite admiration. It was closer to want.
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Then I realised he was South Asian. That detail shifts something. It moves admiration into recognition.
When he speaks about where it began, he returns to saree shops in a small town in India and afternoons spent watching his mother choose fabric. “Going saree shopping with my mum stayed with me deeply,” he says. “Those fabrics and textures continue to influence my work today.” The six yards she moved through are still moving through his work. The memory isn’t decorative; it’s structural.
Fashion became instinct for him long before it became a career. It offered a way to inhabit parts of himself that didn’t always feel uncomplicated growing up. “It gave me a space to express a feminine side I didn’t always feel free to show,” he says. Even when his family resisted the idea of him pursuing fashion, he didn’t question the pull. “It took years to convince them, but I always knew this was my language.”
The boldness people often point to — the exposed skin, the metallic armour-like forms — carries memory. Growing up in environments where bodies were monitored, shaped his relationship to visibility. “Coming from a background where bodies were controlled, my work reclaims skin, presence, and space,” he says. In his garments, exposure doesn’t read as provocation. It reads as intention.
That intention begins before the sketch. He drapes fabric directly on his own body, letting emotion move before structure does. “It always starts with feeling,” he explains. “As the piece takes shape, the story slowly reveals itself.” The silhouette doesn't come first. The feeling does.
When he describes his designs as ritual objects — “almost like omens or prayers” — it doesn’t feel exaggerated. There is something devotional in the way he constructs form. The pieces don’t sit passively on the body. They alter posture. They ask to be inhabited fully. “I want the wearer to feel divine and unapologetically centred,” Mane says. And you understand what he means.
In a world that is finally beginning to reclaim its roots and honour ingenuity, watching a designer honour his roots to the point of invention feels refreshing. Mane doesn’t treat South Asia as reference material. He absorbs it. The myth, the drape of a sari, the resilience of the women he grew up around — these are not motifs. They are structural influences. Women sit at the centre of his work not as muses, but as axis.
As his designs step onto global stages — SZA at the Grammys in 2025, Rhea Raj in 2026, alongside Leomie Anderson, Jade Thirlwall, Raveena and Lara Raj — representation becomes layered. “Growing up, there were very few South Asian designers visible on global platforms,” he says. The craftsmanship was always present, but the authorship wasn’t celebrated in the same way. That awareness shapes how he moves now. “I’m conscious of making sure our stories are told through our own voices, not filtered or diluted. This isn’t a moment of arrival. It’s a moment of recognition.”
When Rhea Raj wore Rohmane to the Grammys this year, it felt quietly significant. A South-Asian artist in a South Asian designer on one of the world’s most watched red carpets carries weight. Mane, however, speaks about it with calm clarity. “Seeing Rhea embody the piece exactly as I imagined was what mattered most,” he says. “I admire both Rhea and Lara deeply, and dressing them genuinely feels like dressing my own sisters.” The validation is real, but it doesn’t anchor him there. “It confirms I’m on the right path,” he admits, “but it never feels like an endpoint.”
Because he isn’t building isolated moments. He’s building continuity. “Yes, very consciously,” he says of constructing a larger world through his collections. “Each collection is part of something bigger, shaped by ritual, fantasy, and emotion.” The pieces speak to each other. They create an atmosphere.
When someone encounters his work for the first time, he doesn’t want them to understand it immediately. “Fantasy,” he says, without hesitation. “I want them to feel fantasy before anything else.” Interpretation can come later.
Right now, his curiosity is expanding toward scale — toward presenting his work through a catwalk, on his own terms. “What people have seen so far is only a fraction of what I can do,” he says. It doesn’t read as bravado. It reads as readiness.
And perhaps that’s what makes following Rohit Mane compelling. The world he’s building doesn’t feel complete. It feels in motion.
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