Tarun Tahiliani

Born in Bombay, Tarun Tahiliani, a Wharton School of Business MBA graduate, co-founded Ensemble with his wife Sailaja in 1987, pioneering luxury fashion retail in India. After studying at FIT, New York, and gaining international acclaim, he founded the Tarun Tahiliani Design Studio in Delhi in 1995, and played a vital role in founding the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) in 1999, leading to India's own Fashion Week. In 2003, he became the first Indian designer at Milan Fashion Week. Beyond fashion, he has ventured into architecture and interior design, evident in his stores nationwide.

Alia Allana is an investigative journalist at Object, a narrative journalism magazine. As a crime reporter, she has reported from prisons, and covered conflicts across the globe. While her entry into fashion writing began as a cub reporter, it crystalized into a deeper enquiry on attire through a study of Tarun Tahiliani’s famed dhoti-sari. Since then, she has explored the challenges faced by artisans, the threat posed by industrialization to a craft-rich country such as India and the environmental consequences of fast fashion.