Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction
In a season where haute couture courts the celestial and the surreal, Gaurav Gupta’s Spring/Summer 2024 collection, “Aarohanam”, stood as a meditative crescendo. Presented during Paris Haute Couture Week, the Indian couturier offered not merely garments, but a spiritual elevation—a luminous climb from the material to the metaphysical.
Aarohanam, a Sanskrit term denoting “ascension,” forms the philosophical spine of the collection. It is the symbolic journey from density to lightness, from ignorance to transcendence—echoing the unfurling of kundalini, the divine feminine energy coiled at the base of the spine in yogic tradition. But this was no literal translation of mysticism. Instead, Gupta transfigured ancient spiritual ideograms into sculptural silhouettes, each more evocative than the last.


Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction
The collection unfolded in deliberate phases. It opened in obsidian and ash—gowns that clung to the body like whispered shadows—then gradually introduced iridescent whites and sun-kissed metallics. Golds were neither ostentatious nor ornamental, but metaphors for illumination. Each look, rendered with microscopic precision, was at once corporeal and cosmic.
Gupta’s couture vocabulary—familiar to those who follow his ascending trajectory—was on full display, yet refined to near transcendence. Sinuous drapes spiraled around the body like rising smoke. Architectural corsets flared into winged panels. Trousers were draped like sacred vestments; capes cascaded like waterfalls of molten metal. This season, his commitment to form met a higher calling.

Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction
One particular standout: a sculpted bodice in white micro-crystal mesh, emerging from a sheer cocoon of organza, encircled by metallic filament structures that pulsed like solar flares. It was fashion as aura—an ephemeral presence, caught mid-transformation.
Traditional Indian embroidery techniques—Zardozi, Mukaish, and Badla—were deployed with rare restraint, becoming less embellishment and more embodiment. Threads and crystals served as conduits of light. Even the fabrics seemed alchemized: tulle hardened into architecture, while silk georgette turned ethereal.

Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction
Yet the greatest triumph of Aarohanam may lie in Gupta’s ability to choreograph complexity into quietude. Where many collections scream for attention, Gupta whispered. The result was an atmosphere not unlike the final moment of a Raga: stillness that resounds.
In a world increasingly obsessed with spectacle, Gaurav Gupta’s Aarohanam invites reflection. It does not demand that we look at the body—but that we look through it, toward something higher. As the final model glided down the runway, encased in a shroud of weightless gold, one sensed that this wasn’t just the end of a show, but the arrival of something sacred.

Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction




Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction

Photo Credits: Gaurav Gupta Instagram/Reproduction