When The Designer Became Her Own Muse

Sumana Mukherjee
6 days ago
4 min read

The wedding began with turmeric under fingernails and the scent of Earth thick in the morning air, a soft November light spilling across Gurugram and Delhi, where over three days an intimate, handcrafted celebration was created from the imagination of Anhad Bhullar Malhotra, the designer and founder of the Delhi-based label House of Hindee. Around the time she was gaining recognition for her refined understanding of textiles, Anhad was already designing her own wedding, which became a living document of everything she believes about the promise of #HandmadeWithLove.

Her haldi was an uncomplicated vision in bright yellow silk, a simple Punjabi kurta with a salwar, soft and fluid, clinging lightly to the skin as her family covered her in turmeric and clay, their laughter rising with the smell of raw haldi. Her makeup artist joked that her skin had “turned yellow underneath,” but the way the ritual progressed, unadorned and entirely human, seemed to echo everything Anhad stands for as a designer: simplicity, authenticity, and the belief that beauty grows from what is touched by hand.

That evening, she transformed into a gown made from handwoven chanderi. The silhouette was western in its restraint with the surface unembellished except for a short zardozi jacket glimmering in soft gold, bringing into the life the combined vision of Anhad and the renowned fashion designer Samant Chauhan. Her hair was neatly tied with real orchids, her jewelry subtle. She says she wanted the fabric to disappear into her, not the other way around. At a time when most brides were leaning toward labels and glitter, she chose clarity instead, wearing her confidence like another layer of silk.

Anhad’s Mehendi outfit began, as most of her ideas do, with a story—an ornament her father once brought home from Uzbekistan, a traditional matha patti with a single ruby set in its center. That ruby decided everything that followed. From it emerged a rich palette and a design that seemed to travel between geographies—a short handwoven green Kimkhaab kurta with side buttons, a silk lehenga with a base layer created by cutting and pleating an old Banarasi sari into a full circular frill. “Every little element originated from somewhere meaningful,” she said.

The final day, her wedding day, carried the quiet weight of months of making. Her outfit took five and a half months to embroider, with three artisans working every single day on over fifteen metres of fabric specially woven for her in Banaras. It was silk-cotton, threaded entirely with real zari, luminous and alive under natural light. She had refused all imitation shades of gold—no beige pretending to be metallic, no khaki masquerading as tradition. The silhouette was an anarkali, to honour the sacred Sikh wedding ritual of Anand Karaj. The embroidery was drawn from old textile pattern books at the Victoria and Albert Museum with floral motifs for beauty, pomegranates for fertility, peacocks for the spirit of grace.

Her dupatta was silk chiffon, chosen because her mother had worn the same fabric on her wedding day, a small repetition that tied the two ceremonies together across time. It was detailed with Aari work and dotted with tiny butis to echo the anarkali beneath. Into this composition of gold she wove her own colour of truth—sapphire blue, her chosen stone—appearing quietly and treasuring her secrets. Her jewelry was collected over years, curated between her parents and herself, nothing bought in haste. The belt that cinched her waist had its own history; it was made from a piece of real zari her family had saved more than twenty years earlier, revived by embroidering it with tiny garnet beads. The tassels that finished the belt were handmade by a local craftswoman, one by one, in the final week before the wedding.

She wore red silk churidar pants beneath the anarkali for comfort and modesty, paired with shoes from Dubai that matched the exact hue of the red used in her dupatta. Around her wrists hung Kaleere made of real coconuts—a revival of the old Punjabi tradition where brides carried coconuts filled with nuts and grains to sustain them on the long journey to their new homes after the wedding ceremony. “They symbolized where we came from,” she said. “It was important to remember that.”

Even her wedding decor carried her signature. Her family, who work with exquisite furniture, built the chandeliers and the decor themselves in their factory at Neemrana, transporting everything to the venue on the day of the wedding. The cake was decorated with real lilies at her insistence. There was no outsourced aesthetic, no one to impose a palette. It was, much like her outfit, made by hand, built by heart.

Eight years later, Anhad still wears what she made. The Bordeaux chanderi gown walks out for social gatherings and the Banarasi outfit travels between cousins. She says she wanted to make clothes that could breathe beyond the occasion—that garments should be “worn again, re-styled, remembered, and passed down.” For her, a wedding outfit is indeed an heirloom that grows in meaning each time it’s touched.

“If you spend a rupee,” Anhad says, “make sure it feels worth that rupee. Don’t buy a copy of someone else’s idea—make your own.” She speaks of craft with the same calm conviction she brings to her design work. For her, a sustainable choice is an everlasting attitude. To choose handwoven silk over machine-made net. To choose legacy over imitation. To choose time over trend.