In a city brimming with creative energy, very few young designers have managed to capture Bengaluru’s attention quite like the visionary behind Destello Combat — Faith Michael. Once known for her refined menswear label Destello, Faith has since re-emerged at the helm of a radically new fashion frontier: couture-driven boxing wear.
Faith’s journey, like many in the creative industry, began humbly and instinctively. “My first job was in fashion,” she recalls with an easy smile. “I was selected as an in-house stylist for Prestige, a menswear brand in the city. From there, I moved to a womenswear label as their stylist and content production manager,” she adds. Those years, she explains, were formative — a crash course in design, visual storytelling and the subtle architecture of style.
Her next big leap was Amazon, followed by an intense period of freelancing that would sharpen her skills further. “I’d gained a lot of experience by then, so I moved from styling to producing. Over two or three years, I created campaigns, videos and photo shoots for over 100 brands,” she explains. The sheer volume of work pushed her to expand her creative vocabulary and build a formidable portfolio.
But, as with many creative trajectories, the path wasn’t linear. The pandemic struck and everything changed overnight. “In 2020, when the pandemic hit, everything stopped. My clients disappeared. So, I took a job with the Apollo Group and moved to Gurugram. I was still producing content, but not in fashion anymore,” Faith tells us. Despite the shift, Faith continued to nurture her creative side, developing a digital video series that performed well — until life intervened again. A move back to Bengaluru disrupted her plans. “Everything collapsed once I left Gurugram,” she says candidly, reflecting on a period that demanded difficult decisions. And then came the most unexpected twist in her story — boxing. “Honestly, by accident,” she laughs.
Returning to Bengaluru in December last year, Faith dropped by a boxing match organised by Grassroot Boxing Academy, a team she’d worked with previously. “We’d stayed in touch since I’d styled them earlier. They had grown into this massive promoter and they told me they needed someone to dress Indian boxers. I had absolutely no idea what boxers wore,” she admits.
Curiosity led her down a rabbit hole. She bought samples, studied silhouettes and observed what Indian athletes typically wore in the ring. She explains, “they all looked… plain. But the international athletes were arriving in outfits that felt glamorous, larger-than-life, stage-ready. I thought — why not us?”
Her first experiment came soon after: a robe and shorts set for a boxer travelling to compete in Thailand. “He wore it… and he won. That moment was incredibly gratifying. I realised this could be something meaningful,” Faith enthuses. The true turning point arrived at a major match at Sunburn Arena organised by Grassroot Boxing Academy. “I created outfits for twelve boxers from across the country — men and women. Ten of them won. It felt like a sign,” she reveals. The success sealed her conviction: this was no side project; this was the future.
Destello, once a shirts-centric label, evolved into Destello Combat — a sport-specific brand rooted in craft, creativity and unapologetic flair. “The shirts market was too mass for me. I couldn’t explore design the way I wanted. With boxing wear, I can sketch ideas that people have never imagined and bring them to life,” she avers. Today, Destello Combat outfits boxers across the world, from rising Indian champions to international athletes competing on some of the sport’s biggest stages. “One of my recent designs was worn by an African boxer in Saudi Arabia — at the world’s biggest boxing event. I started with one boxer. Now it’s global,” she gushes.
And what of the original Destello? Any plans to revive it? Faith shakes her head gently, “I’ve found what I truly want to do. This niche lets me be creative in ways that shirts simply couldn’t.” In carving this path — from stylist to producer to designer of India’s first couture-forward boxing-wear label — Faith symbolises the newest wave of Bengaluru fashion: hyper-niche and globally ambitious. Destello Combat isn’t just redefining sportswear.
Email: romal@newindianexpress.com
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