Three queer-owned homegrown labels that have changed the face of fashion

Queerness might be interwoven into the fabric of fashion, shaping its boldest expressions, but only a few phenomenal labels have underlined its place in their narrative. Standing apart are a few visionary labels that celebrate inclusivity, weaving it into the very essence of their creative identity. Bazaar India spotlights three queer-owned homegrown labels —Suneet Varma, Bobo Calcutta, and Siddhartha Tytler—that have changed the face of fashion and embroidered their design language with the richness of inclusivity.

‘A WOMAN TO LOVE’

Suneet Varma Couture

“Fashion belongs to the queer world,” announces Suneet Varma, with some prefacing, about 20 minutes after our chat has veered into the label’s one tailor, one machine’ beginnings, studying costume history in London, and being madly in love with magical heroines of yore. He is not wrong; for years, queer men have held fort in global fashion, their queerness never explicitly being at the centre of the conversation, but informing it pervasively nonetheless.

Varma is an OG in more ways than one. He isn’t just one of the founding fathers of couture as we know it today, he also paved the way for being openly queer well before it was socially kosher. When he married his partner in 2013, he made a point that had to be made: That queer partnerships are as valid and vital as heteronormative ones. His vocal queerness went hand-in-hand with his success in fashion, adding to the supernova he became instead of taking away from it.

A big part of why? “Because I love women,” says Varma, simply. It’s a love that cannot exist when it is fettered by the dynamics of power and desire, and so, it “cannot come from anyone but a queer man”. It is a love that wants nothing but to admire and bask in the beauty of femininity, without hoping to partake of it.“I love nothing more than a beautiful woman—their hair, the way they smell, how they carry themselves.There’s something about a beautiful woman; it’s incomparable to anything else.”

Varma recalls his early fascination with both Dimple Kapadia and Meena Kumari.“I think Chalte Chalte [Pakeezah] has 20 million views, and I’m 18 million of them!” He laughs.

“And Dimple Kapadia—my god! She was stunning, of course, but there was also an air about her. She had it.”

It was that elusive ‘it’ of the beautiful woman that Varma dedicated his craft to capturing—a feat he accomplished with his legendary golden breast plate, a piece inspired by Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus that went viral at a time before the internet. “With resin and acrylic, I created a mold, and this was my celebration of the bosom.” It didn’t just make international headlines in the moment, it proved timeless when Varma got a call from Feroze Gujral, one of the first models to wear it, to recreate it for her daughter’s wedding. “I think I realised then how much that legend had lived. For me, it was a celebration of my queerness, which was always linked so inextricably to the art in which I found myself.”

To Varma, the essence of queerness is authenticity; staying true to who you are and finding ways to pay homage to it in your work. The archival tiara he used in his Flight of Fancy show (an ode to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Swan Lake) is a perfect example.“I was in Paris many years ago on a budget; only a thousand dollars for my whole 10-day trip. I went to a flea market and found two things that had once belonged to a famous French ballerina.The first was a box of feathers, the second was a tiara. I blew my entire thousand dollars on them!” He laughs. But the box of feathers lies safely in his cupboard, and the tiara was pulled out for his Spring/Summer 2010 show.“I will always find ways to revive these parts of my journey, in new avatars.” And it’s that celebration of self-discovery, key to queerness, is equally key to Suneet Varma Couture.

‘SHINE BRIGHT’

Bobo Calcutta

The first time I ever interviewed Bobo [Ayushman Mitra], we were meant to speak for an hour. Instead, we spent the afternoon at his Calcutta home, reminiscing about our school years, eating homemade shorshe ilish, and swapping coming out stories. Cut to four years later, and Mitra is just as indefatigably warm, with a heart as open as he always has been about his queerness.

“I’ve known since school,” he laughs, not the easiest revelation in an all-boys boarding school. Mitra counts himself lucky; his early questioning of his queerness was welcomed with open arms. Boarding school was a time for discovery and self-acceptance, filled with unrequited crushes and secret loves that would turn to old friendships with time. Getting into the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design [London] only helped that blossom. His brand, Bobo, started as a project at that college, infused with the flush of queer culture he was exposed to, but rooted in Indian mythology and art.“When I first presented Bobo, my professor said, ‘Please pack up your bags, go back to your country, and start this as soon as possible’. I took his advice,” Mitra chuckles.

Unlike a couple of other young queer designers, Mitra finds the term ‘queer-owned’ liberating, and not reductive. “Queerness is about being free—celebrating your identity and embracing it. It’s also exactly what Bobo is about.” He’s not wrong; think of Bobo, and the visual is immediately one of colour, loud vibrance—unapologetic and high- saturation. But what I’ve always found fascinating is Mitra’s penchant for Indian mythology, and it’s profound influence on his work. In most instances, queerness and religion don’t mix. But ask Mitra, and he’ll point out that nothing is queerer than lore.

“I inherited both my love for art and for mythology from my grandfather. I grew up watching him paint goddesses without blouses, saris draped over their naked breasts, and never once being made to feel ashamed of my curiosity.”It’s his unique take on that ilk of artwork that forms the backbone of Mitra’s brand.Mitra also points out how queerness and gender fluidity have been ingrained in Indian mythology from the start. “Think of queer-code friendships like Krishna-Sudama, or Vishnu changing form to Mohini, Shiva to Ardhanarishvara, Agni to Svaha. Gender has been fluid, meant to be mixed and explored without walls from the very beginning. It is modernness that has created that sense of condemnation about it.”

Mitra has never been shy about owning his queerness, or its influence on his work. His intent—to create a utopian world through his clothes where gender and sexuality are free from the bounds of society—reflects in his use of colour, subtle queer imagery, and his unabashed maximalism. “It’s essentially about love—unstoppable, unrestrained love.”

‘LET MEN WEAR SKIRTS’

Siddartha Tytler

When a 17-year-old Siddartha Tytler walked into a Versace store in NewYork, it was love at first spin.“I looked around the store, and in three seconds, I was obsessed,” he says, adding that shopping at Rohit Bal for his sister’s wedding a year later only solidified that obsession. It took some convincing, but eventually the designer got his fashion education at FIT, NewYork. From then to 2024, Tytler has created a label as synonymous with drama, grandiosity, and blurred binaries as, well, queerness itself.

“For my first show after lockdown, there was this need to change the game,” Tytler says.“That’s when we had our male models come out in skirts. It was bold, experimental—and it struck a chord with a global audience.The appeal of my lehengas widened across genders—I had a 55-year-old man from New York wanting to wear it simply for the shock value. He said ‘I want people to stare at me.Whether they’re laughing at me or loving it—I’m gonna wear it.’I loved that!’ It’s what queerness is about—making a statement.”

What sets the queer designer, especially one creating womenswear, apart from the others is the appreciation of the form without the partisan POV. “Women designers tend to dress women the way she wants to dress. A straight, male designer will lead with how he wants the woman to be dressed. Queer men are free from both biases. The male gaze is eliminated. We’re not objectifying women; we’re enhancing what they’re already working with.” That can often be where the drama enters the frame. “So many straight male designers err on the side of minimalism. But when a woman wants to be bold, a straight man will want to suppress it. A gay man doesn’t care. He’ll give you what you want…within reason.”

As a couturier, fashion is custom, an intimate experience that does not exist in an off-the-rack sale. “The women I design for are comfortable enough around me to strip down, walk around the studio and try things on. You won’t really walk around half-naked unless there’s an inherent trust.” Tytler establishes quickly that deciding to own (or not own) your queerness in the context of work is deeply individual. “Would I be the same designer?” he chews on the subject of hypothetical straightness and its impact on his choices.“Would I even be a designer at all? I don’t know.At one point, I wanted to be a firefighter,” he jokes.

But he admits, nevertheless, that there are strands of it that invariably lace themselves through a queer-owned label’s narrative. “Growing up queer often means being made to feel lesser than who you are,”Tytler says. It’s what he believes instils a survival instinct, a sense of rebellion that can’t help but show up in your work. It was a rebellion against glamour in [Alexander] McQueen’s work, he mentions. It’s a rebellion against the binary in his.

Images: Courtesy of the labels

This piece originally appeared in the December print edition of Harper’s Bazaar India

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