If her shoes reimagined the everyday modern kolhapuris that walked runways from Mumbai to Milan—her bags sit somewhere else entirely. They belong to the world of collectors, storytellers, women who’d rather carry history on their shoulder than a logo. It started with the feeling that no bag out there could really capture Aprajita Toor’s own chaos, colour, and contradictions. “Every woman knows that moment,” she laughs. “When what’s in the shops just doesn’t say who you are. I wanted to create something that could hold it all..the emotions, the drama, and still feel like me.”
That impulse became Project Mehbooba by Aprajita Toor, a collection of one-of-a-kind pieces that are less “bag line” and more wearable art. Tiny embroidered satchels that feel like secrets, and oversized “body bags” that command a room. Each piece is stitched from fragments of culture: Afghanistan, Turkey, Kutch, Sindh, the Balkans. All woven into a story that stretches across continents and centuries. Migration, memory, tradition: carried in every thread.
Aprajita’s process feels deeply personal. Some people doodle to clear their heads; she stitches. A fabric scrap found in Istanbul, a patch of embroidery from Gujarat, a fragment of lace saved from childhood summers at her nani’s home, pieced together with the intimacy of memory. “This is my ode to the odd,” she says.
The vibe is slow fashion meets 90s Bollywood. For now, Project Mehbooba lives exclusively at the Aprajita Toor Studio in Mumbai, with plans to drop new pieces. Jewellery, apparel, maybe more, every six months. It’s a creative playground, separate from her footwear line (which still powers her retail business), and closer to something like joy.
These bags are stitched poems, messy love letters, and cultural time capsules. And, like Aprajita herself, they refuse to fit neatly into any one box.