Atreyee Poddar
Gaurav Gupta’s SS26 couture show The Divine Androgyne wasn’t trying to charm, flatter, or sell a fantasy of easy luxury. It made the audience think deeper about bodies, identity, and the future of form itself. Not everyone will love it. That’s usually how you know it matters. The show leaned hard into the metaphysical like celestial bodies, mythic beings, and silhouettes that looked less tailored and more embodied.
The theme of the show was The Divine Androgyne and it wasn’t subtle intentionally. Gender dissolved into form, form dissolved into sculpture, and suddenly the binaries felt embarrassingly outdated. This was couture operating several timelines ahead.
Gupta’s signature sculptural language was dialled up to operatic levels. Corseted torsos bloomed into molten extensions, gowns spiralled like galaxies mid-collision, and nothing behaved the way fabric traditionally should. Physics lost this round.
Beneath the spectacle was serious workmanship—complex draping, precision construction, and Indian craft traditions translated into a future-facing couture vocabulary. No didactic explanations, no heritage monologues. Just mastery, casually flexed.
If you were looking for cocktail gowns, you were at the wrong designer’s show. Gaurav Gupta’s pieces were designed to be felt before they were worn—editorial in intent and unapologetically impractical. Couture, as it should be.
After previous seasons steeped in personal catharsis, this collection felt outward-looking, almost serene in its ambition. Less pain, more philosophy. Less autobiography, more myth-making.
Gupta isn’t playing the “Indian designer in Paris” card anymore. He’s operating as a global couturier who happens to be Indian—and the distinction matters. This show confirmed his place not on the margins of couture week, but firmly inside its conversation.