London Fashion Week is less than a month away and with it bringing designers from all over the world, I’d like to take the opportunity to spotlight 5 designers from South Asia that will grace the UK stage. I’ll personally be keeping an eye out for these designers, studying how their culture informs global couture.
HARRI
You might have seen HARRI floating around social media when Sam Smith wore an inflatable latex suit to the Brit Awards – such silhouettes and boldness are the signature style of the brand. Harikrishnan Keezhathil Surendran Pillai, or Harri, is a menswear designer from Kerala who established his label after completing his MA in Menswear at London College of Fashion in 2020.
HARRI consistently blends daring proportions and inhuman silhouettes, the pieces often evoke imagery of balloon-like sculptures. Drawing from surrealism, HARRI explores this performance in couture and clothing as artistic expression and mimetic practice. For LFW 2026, I’m hoping to see the same style of grandiose silhouettes but expanding into different colours and textiles, moving on from the intense latex and shininess seen in his 2025 collections.
Sanyukta Shrestha
Specialising in luxury women’s wear and bespoke designer wedding dresses, Nepalese born British Designer Sanyukta Shrestha has become a pioneer for showing how women’s fashion can be sustainable, ethical and cruelty free. And this isn’t a recent thing – she’s been redefining the luxury market through sustainable creations while empowering women since 1998. While sustainability has been on the rise and (slowly but surely) becoming the norm in the fashion industry, it’s important to remember our roots and how we got here – Shrestha has become a vital catalyst to the current sustainability movement in the 2020s.
Currently, some of her pieces are preserved in The Fashion Museum, marking her as the first designer of Nepali origin to be documented in the history of The Fashion Museum in 2012. Her Nepalese background can be seen through meticulous hand-spun and hand weaved sustainable materials, paying tribute to 1000 years old Nepalese Craftmanship. I hope with Shrestha’s presence at LFW, more designers will be inspired to see that couture doesn’t diminish with sustainability.
Ahluwalia
Ahluwalia comes from Priya Ahluwalia, a designer of dual heritage from India to Nigeria with roots in London. She is another designer who uses sustainable practices in her fashion which makes me appreciate the vivid colours and seamless silhouettes in her work that much more. The designer works with responsible sourcing, giving materials from vintage and surplus clothing new life through textile techniques.
Ahluwalia offers a unique perspective in her fashion with her multiculturalism. Designers like her are vital for fashion as even with a shift to the global in the couture movement, it can often feel restrict and limit the many cultures that designers get to experience in their lifetime – boxing them in with a label rather than appreciating identity as an abstract and unique experience. As someone who grew up with dual heritage and was raised in London, Ahluwalia’s works showcase how one is able to interpret this wide idea of identity into fashion.
clothsurgeon
The brainchild of Rav Matharu, clothsurgeon, is a Luxury British Menswear brand that melds the designer’s love for street culture, craftmanship, art and fashion, bringing a contemporary but still finely tailored aesthetic to menswear. clothsurgeon combines Sportswear with Savile Row style tailoring which is important to note as in 2022, Rav Matharu made history, being the first South Asian designer to open a bespoke streetwear store on Savile Row.
Matharu has a journey like no other, going from professional footballer to fashion designer, using premium quality and locally sourced fabrics to combine streetwear with high-end menswear. clothsurgeon has attracted the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Kendrick Lamar and FKA Twigs – and it’s perfectly understandable why with how the designer’s aesthetics create high quality garments for those with an eye for streetwear.
Nikita Karizma
The blend of South Asian heritage and global pop culture is ever-present in Nikita Karizma‘s design. Highly popular in the celebrity field, Karizma uses her unique insight to blue high fashion with culture to produce pieces that empower with glitz and glam. There’s an unabashed youth to her work, a rebellious and feminine look throughout making it ideal for pop icons to wear out and about and in concerts – she’s got a vast range of celebrity clientele, from Rhea Raj to Lady Gaga, showing that her work champions for diversity.