Photo: Courtesy of Gaurav Gupta Save Story Save this story Save Story Save this story While India’s growing crop of global fashion brands are absent from the Paris Fashion Week schedule this season, Gaurav Gupta is using the moment to highlight a different milestone. Nestled in the city’s 8th arrondissement, the Delhi-born designer’s new by-appointment couture atelier, which sits just two minutes from the Grand Palais, soft-launched on October 2.
While Gupta is a returning fixture on the Paris calendar, ever since his debut in 2023 at Palais de Tokyo, the opening marks his presence in the fashion capital not just during the week, but permanently. Fellow Indian couturier Vaishali S opened a location on Boulevard Saint-Germain in 2024; Sabyasachi and Anita Dongre have stores in New York, and Manish Malhotra has one in Dubai. But Gupta has taken an alternative approach: no shopfront and no footfall to chase.
For an independent label that specializes in couture, the 300-square-meter appointment-only location is built around the VICs who are already asking to meet him in the French capital. “The idea was really born out of that demand,” Gupta says. “It allows us to offer the complete couture service, from viewing and trying the pieces to customization and purchase, in a much more intimate environment.”
Gupta is known for sculptural, surreal couture and occasionwear that often draws on the logic of the sari, accented with hand-embellished details, and reads as wearable architecture, making him a favorite for celebrity dressing — from Beyoncé and Cardi B, to Alia Bhatt and Xin Liu. Beyond the couture business, the ready-to-wear line has about 25 retail partners, including Harrods in London (with which he is partnering on a special Diwali event later this month), Vakko in Türkiye, Bergdorf Goodman in the US, and Bloomingdale’s in Dubai, plus five flagship stores in India. The Paris atelier is intended primarily for couture clients.
Beyoncé wears Gaurav Gupta during her Renaissance World Tour in Atlanta.
Despite the retail reach, Hema Bose, founder and director of brand consultancy Maison Bose, who works with the house on developing its global footprint, says the new atelier answers a different need. “There is also an important distinction between being stocked internationally and having your own physical environment,” she says. A standalone atelier, she explains, lets the house control “the entire experience”, from the space and the presentation of the collections to the service and the storytelling.
Opening during Paris Fashion Week, when editors and stylists are in town, and around four months before Haute Couture Week in January, means the atelier will have established itself before Gupta’s next Paris showing. “The atelier allows us to continue that conversation beyond Paris Couture Week and more importantly to work with our global couture clients throughout the year,” the designer says. “It becomes a permanent extension of what we do in Paris already.”
Unlike Sabyasachi and Rahul Mishra, Gaurav Gupta is entirely self-funded. “Independence has been a very deliberate part of how we have built the brand so far,” Gupta says, adding that he currently intends to remain independent, building the business organically, with the atelier as the next step in that journey.
Gupta photographed at the label’s atelier.
Gaurav Gupta’s annual turnover is approximately $9.5 million, according to the company — 85% of which is generated in India, while…