Manish Malhotra walked the official Haute Couture calendar in Paris this July, becoming the fourth Indian designer ever to do so. Rahul Mishra was the first, having appeared in Paris as a guest designer in 2019 before receiving the official invitation from the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture for his 2020 showcase, a place he has held every season since. Vaishali S followed in 2021, then Gaurav Gupta in 2023. Malhotra’s debut this year, and Mishra’s continued presence, both read, correctly, as milestones for Indian fashion.
Manish Malhotra Fall 2026 collection, ‘MAA’, presented at Haute Couture Week, Paris.
What went less remarked upon was who was in the room for both, and why that is worth a closer look.
Isha Ambani at Manish Malhotra's show at Paris Haute Couture Week, 2026
Isha Ambani attended Malhotra’s debut and Mishra’s presentation. As Executive Director of Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, she now oversees the entity that Reliance Brands, once run day-to-day by Darshan Mehta, has since been folded into. Mehta was the operator behind two decades of Reliance’s fashion bets, credited with backing Malhotra, Mishra and several other names before his death in April. Isha Ambani is the executive those bets now answer to.
Isha Ambani at Rahul Mishra's show at Paris Haute Couture Week, 2026
That is worth sitting with, because Malhotra sold a 40 per cent stake in his company to Reliance Brands, and his route to Paris ran through that capital. It is not the only route that exists. Gaurav Gupta built his way onto the same calendar, and onto Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and the Oscars, with no institutional investor behind him at all. Vaishali Shadangule became the first Indian woman ever invited to show at Paris Haute Couture Week, having started her house on a bank loan of roughly fifty thousand rupees and a one-room boutique in Mumbai. Neither needed a conglomerate’s balance sheet to get there. What they needed was two decades of unglamorous, self-funded work.
This takes nothing away from what Isha Ambani has built with tremendous rigour, or from Malhotra’s own accomplishments. She has, by every public account, a genuine sensibility for craft and designers she has chosen to back. Her building of Tira, her stewardship of Reliance’s homegrown fashion labels, her role at NMACC, all point to someone who has put real money and much-needed infrastructure behind Indian design.
Nita Ambani and Isha Ambani at NMACC inaugural dinner
But sensibility and scale are different things when the person exercising taste also runs the largest retail balance sheet in the country. Gupta and Vaishali S prove the organic route to Paris exists and works. What Reliance’s capital offers is something else: a faster one. As the payoff for designers who take that route keeps compounding, on bigger stages, with bigger visibility, the real question for Indian fashion is whether an industry that now has both a slow, grit-built path and a fast, capital-built one will keep valuing the first as much as it rewards the second.
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Manish Malhotra walked the official Haute Couture calendar in Paris this July, becoming the fourth Indian designer ever to do so. Rahul Mishra was the first, having appeared in Paris as a guest designer in 2019 before receiving the official invitation from the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture for his 2020 showcase, a place he has held every season since. Vaishali S followed in 2021, then Gaurav Gupta in 2023. Malhotra’s debut this year, and Mishra’s continued presence, both read, correctly, as milestones for Indian fashion.
Manish Malhotra Fall 2026 collection, ‘MAA’, presented at Haute Couture Week, Paris.
What went less remarked upon was who was in the room for both, and why that is worth a closer look.
Isha Ambani at Manish Malhotra's show at Paris Haute Couture Week, 2026
Isha Ambani attended Malhotra’s debut and Mishra’s presentation. As Executive Director of Reliance Retail Ventures Limited, she now oversees the entity that Reliance Brands, once run day-to-day by Darshan Mehta, has since been folded into. Mehta was the operator behind two decades of Reliance’s fashion bets, credited with backing Malhotra, Mishra and several other names before his death in April. Isha Ambani is the executive those bets now answer to.
Isha Ambani at Rahul Mishra's show at Paris Haute Couture Week, 2026
That is worth sitting with, because Malhotra sold a 40 per cent stake in his company to Reliance Brands, and his route to Paris ran through that capital. It is not the only route that exists. Gaurav Gupta built his way onto the same calendar, and onto Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and the Oscars, with no institutional investor behind him at all. Vaishali Shadangule became the first Indian woman ever invited to show at Paris Haute Couture Week, having started her house on a bank loan of roughly fifty thousand rupees and a one-room boutique in Mumbai. Neither needed a conglomerate’s balance sheet to get there. What they needed was two decades of unglamorous, self-funded work.
This takes nothing away from what Isha Ambani has built with tremendous rigour, or from Malhotra’s own accomplishments. She has, by every public account, a genuine sensibility for craft and designers she has chosen to back. Her building of Tira, her stewardship of Reliance’s homegrown fashion labels, her role at NMACC, all point to someone who has put real money and much-needed infrastructure behind Indian design.
Nita Ambani and Isha Ambani at NMACC inaugural dinner
But sensibility and scale are different things when the person exercising taste also runs the largest retail balance sheet in the country. Gupta and Vaishali S prove the organic route to Paris exists and works. What Reliance’s capital offers is something else: a faster one. As the payoff for designers who take that route keeps compounding, on bigger stages, with bigger visibility, the real question for Indian fashion is whether an industry that now has both a slow, grit-built path and a fast, capital-built one will keep valuing the first as much as it rewards the second.
TO BE CONTINUED, FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY.
This is where the surface ends and the reporting begins.
The complete piece, the full archive, and access to The French Press Circle. Reporting answerable only to its readers.
Already a subscriber ?
Login
Read these on the house, with our compliments.
A selection from the current issue, open to all readers. Read them in full. The rest is one decision away.