Delhi-based designer Divyam Mehta has built his own rhythm in India’s fashion landscape. One rooted in craft and fluent in modernity. In his latest Gardener campaign, Mehta returns once again to Shibori, the ancient Japanese art of resist dyeing that has become something of a recurring language in his work. Shibori, derived from the Japanese word shiboru, meaning “to wring” or “to squeeze.” I is a practice that dates back over a thousand years. At its simplest, it’s about manipulating fabric through folding, stitching, binding, or clamping to resist dye in certain areas. What makes it remarkable is that no two results are ever the same. The process is slow, precise, and entirely at the mercy of chance. It’s a collaboration between maker and material, one that rewards patience and a willingness to let go.
That philosophy runs deep through Mehta’s collections. “My relationship with Shibori goes back to my earliest collections,” he says. “It was important to me to bring this technique into our contemporary vocabulary, and to let it blossom into something new. Each piece feels like the fabric teaching me how far the craft can grow.”
In Gardener, Shibori is about state of mind; a meditation on control and surrender, repetition and discovery. The silhouettes are fluid and easy: denims and draped lungi trousers, sprouting sleeve tops, softly quilted jackets, and resist-dyed odnis that catch the light like water. The palette is rooted in the natural world: olive, whiskey blue, coal, and plum.
For Mehta, Shibori is a way of slowing down in a world obsessed with speed. He treats it less as a technique and more as a quiet philosophy. One that allows for surprise, imperfection, and the kind of transformation that can only come from time. Like the art of Shibori itself, Divyam Mehta’s garments are lessons in patience. In allowing something to unfold, beautifully, in its own time.
All images courtesy: Divyam Mehta