How Blenders Pride Fashion Tour’s Kolkata finale signalled a new chapter

Most fashion shows are remembered not for who or what walked down the runway but for what shifted once the show was over. The Kolkata finale of Blenders Pride Fashion Tour 2025 understood that distinction well.

Staged on the Hooghly River against the Howrah Bridge, the closing chapter framed fashion as a system under revision. Craft emerged as an active and adaptive element, shaping what comes next in fashion.

Blenders Pride Fashion Tour moved beyond the conventional runway, operating through distinct city-led chapters anchored in a single defining idea of “Making Fashion Move”. The Kolkata edition sharpened this vision further by reframing craft, infrastructure, and ambition as forces that propelled fashion forward.

“Blenders Pride Fashion Tour has always shaped fashion and cultural conversations,” said Debasree Dasgupta, CMO, Pernod Ricard India. “The Kolkata finale brought heritage and innovation into clear alignment.”

“I WANTED TO SHOW HOW INDIAN CRAFTSMANSHIP CAN BE DECONSTRUCTED AND REIMAGINED FOR THE MODERN WORLD” –– Anamika Khanna

Ending the tour in Kolkata was a considered decision. The city’s relationship with craft has always been expansive and layered, shaped by generations of labour, material knowledge, and intellectual exchange. By situating the finale on the Hooghly, a river long central to trade and cultural circulation, the showcase placed fashion within a broader economic and cultural lineage. The setting allowed fashion to be read as part of an ongoing continuum, rooted in place while open to reinvention.

At the centre of this chapter was a showcase by designer Anamika Khanna. Through her AK|OK line, Khanna treated craft as a system in motion—one that was open to deconstruction and reinvention. The collection engaged with familiar craft vocabularies such as zardozi, chikankari, and mirror work, not simply through reverence but through fragmentation and reconstruction. Metallic interventions, chainmail structures, and graphic elements moved these techniques into a modern, future-facing framework.

For Khanna, the show was an opportunity to push familiar techniques into a contemporary framework. “I wanted to show how Indian craftsmanship can be deconstructed and reimagined for the modern world,” she said. “Witnessing the audience embrace this bold reinterpretation of heritage was truly exhilarating.”

The show’s mise-en-scène reinforced this idea. A barge anchored mid-river became the runway, transforming the Hooghly into a working stage rather than a scenic backdrop. Divers opened the show, models emerged from within the structure itself, and lighting, smoke, and sound responded dynamically to movement. Actor Ishaan Khatter, the showstopper for the night, arrived by speedboat, underpinning the sense of momentum that shaped the evening.

Attendees were hosted aboard The Bengal Paddle, a heritage vessel with museum-like interiors and a riverine archive housed within its former boiler room, placing them within Kolkata’s maritime and industrial history.

By positioning Indian craftsmanship as infrastructure rather than embellishment, the show transformed materials and techniques into drivers of momentum. Craft, scale, and production were presented not as static traditions but as active forces shaping how fashion advances, endures, and evolves.