If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know Indian streetwear isn’t just a moment. It’s a movement with roots, purpose, and bite. For decades, India has inspired global fashion quietly, from Victorian-era paisley to Indian silhouettes reinterpreted in Parisian ateliers.
Streetwear in India today isn’t trying to fit into any mould. It’s not chasing a single aesthetic or subculture. Instead, it’s a hybrid of identity and experimentation. People are actively pulling from India’s iconic past, remixing their grandmother’s styling cues with silhouettes born from skate culture, K-pop, or Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar chaos. There’s a growing confidence in mixing cultural codes with personal quirks, and it's showing up everywhere.
That shift isn’t accidental. As people move away from copy-paste fashion formulas, there’s a deeper need to wear something that reflects who they are. For a lot of young Indians, that means pulling inspiration from our own archives. Iconic styling from the past, dad’s vintage shirt, mum’s saree blouse, school uniforms, temple jewellery, is being revived, cropped, layered, and recontextualised.
“There’s no formula, and that’s the point,” says Pallabi, Kunsquad’s co-founder and creative lead. “We’re not trying to ‘modernise’ anything. We’re just letting our heritage breathe differently - through shape, stitch, and story.”
That spirit of reimagining runs deeper than styling. Homegrown brands are finally taking up space. No longer limited to cotton basics or clichéd prints, they’re championing indigenous fabrics, hyperlocal techniques, and visual cues that go far beyond embroidery. You’ll see kantha stitches on caps, Block printing on hoodies, or ikat used to construct something closer to a tracksuit silhouette than a festival kurta.
It’s not just aesthetics either. The rise of Indian streetwear also reflects changing work cultures. With more people working in creative industries or hybrid jobs, fashion no longer has to play safe. You can wear cargos with a hand-dyed kurti to a meeting and no one will question it. It’s not rebellion. Its relevance.
More than ever, young Indians are gravitating toward brands that speak their language. Not just English or Hindi, but a shared understanding of cultural codes, price points, and aspirations. With global prices rising and import duties making international streetwear less accessible, there’s a visible shift towards local brands. People still want quality and cool, but now they want it with context.
“This isn’t just about design,” says Abhishek, who leads the brand strategy at Kunsquad. “It’s about building something sustainable. People want to buy from brands that reflect their reality, not just global trends.”
But while Indian brands are growing, there’s still an elephant in the room. International fashion houses continue to borrow from Indian culture without credit. Scandinavian brands have “reinvented” dupattas, “Tote bags” now resemble India's everyday grocery "Jhola" bags, but these aren’t isolated moments. Indian fashion has influenced the West since the 1800s, from the chintz craze in France to the obsession with Madras checks in preppy American wardrobes. But the conversation is shifting, people are calling out the aesthetic cherry-picking, questioning why our styles are cool only when rebranded by the West.
What matters is that Indian streetwear is no longer waiting for validation. It’s not trying to fit a mould carved out by New York or London. From thrift scenes to block-print revival to experimental styling collectives, it’s writing its own rules. This is a style with memory. Design with a pulse. And pride that doesn’t need to shout, but absolutely will if needed. Indian streetwear is speaking its own language, fluent in nostalgia, grounded in context, and always ready to disrupt.
And if you're here, you're part of it too.
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