10th Anniversary Special: Venkat Gaddam on art, identity, and contemporary Hyderabad style
Hyderabad has always loved its classics—pearls, handwork, and outfits that look like they stepped out of a royal portrait. But over the years, the city’s style mood got bolder with designers mixing tradition and attitude, adding personal expression to Hyderabad’s elegance. We speak to Venkat Gaddam, founder of Whencut Goddamn, a fashion label that embodies the emergence of the city’s younger spirit.
Inside Venkat Gaddam’s Whencut Goddamn
Excerpts:
How did Whencut Goddamn come about? And what does art and the intersection of its various forms mean to you?
Whencut Goddamn grew out of the need to bring every part of my inner world into one space. It was never a planned identity but rather an organic extension of my life, my beliefs, and the way I have moved through the world. Everything I create begins in the small and intimate places — the books I read, the cities and corners I walk through, the moments of quiet realisation, and the emotional experiences that have shaped me into who I am today.
Over time, those influences found their own voice. Art became the place where all these parts could coexist. Painting gave me a sense of truth. Poetry gave me a way to understand myself. Fashion allowed me to translate all of that into something living and moving. Each medium carries a different emotion, and each medium allows me to tell a story that cannot be told in any other way. When these forms meet, they strengthen one another and create a fuller picture of who I am and what I care about. For me, that intersection is not a strategy or a technique. It is simply my way of living.
Your work often moves between softness and rebellion. How do you hold space for both?
Softness and rebellion feel like two sides of the same instinct for me, because both come from a refusal to accept what the world tries to impose. Softness refuses hardness and rebellion refuses silence, and both grow from the same longing to be seen as I am. In Whencut Goddamn, I allow them to exist together without trying to separate them or decide which one is more acceptable. My vulnerability is not weakness but the most confrontational part of me; and my rebellion is not anger but the gentle parts of myself finally speaking out after years of being hidden. My work holds both because I hold both, and it is uncomfortable and beautiful and honest all at the same time.
How do you decide what to protect as private and what to release into the world?
I do not think I have mastered that balance, because I create from the inside out and sometimes the world gets to see pieces of me that I did not plan to share. What I have learned is that I release the emotions that are ready to stop belonging only to me, and I protect the ones that are still teaching me something. Some stories need time to ferment inside me before they can take shape as clothing or art, and others feel so heavy that the only way I can continue carrying them is by letting them move into fabric, ink or thread. Whatever I share no longer belongs only to me, and whatever I keep close becomes the next stage of my own evolution.
Has there ever been a mural that revealed something about yourself that you did not realise while creating it?
I remember one mural where the eyes kept getting larger with every layer, almost watching me as I painted, and only later did I realise I had been expressing how observed and judged I felt by expectations and by the image I was supposed to maintain. My walls often understand me before I understand myself, and sometimes, the art reaches clarity about my emotions long before I do.
In a market that still often defines luxury through price, heritage, or logos, how are you trying to reframe what luxury feels like through emotion, craft, and self-expression?
For me, luxury is not a product but a feeling. It is the experience of being truly seen, the freedom to wear something that carries your truth without apology, and the intimacy of craft that holds emotion in every detail. I want to create luxury that does not rely on loud cues but on the quiet certainty of identity and devotion. Every hour my team and I spend on art, handwork, or small details becomes a way of telling someone that their inner world deserves this level of care. If a piece makes someone feel more themselves, more alive, more rooted in their own skin, then that is luxury in its purest form, and everything else is only marketing.
Do you think fashion today is more about identity than aspiration, and how does that shift influence the way you design?
I believe fashion today is driven more by identity, because aspiration looks outward while identity grows inward. We live in a time where people are tired of pretending and ready to express what feels real to them. This shift has freed me as a designer, because my focus is no longer on predicting what people might want, but on revealing parts of myself and trusting that others will recognise pieces of their own story within it. I design as if I am writing a diary and allowing strangers to read the handwriting. The identity-first fashion is more honest and also more demanding because it asks the creator to know themselves before shaping anything for the world.
Hyderabad is often seen as a city of tradition and old world grandeur. How do you place a label like Whencut Goddamn, which is raw, expressive, and contemporary, within that cultural landscape?
Hyderabad is a city of beautiful contradictions, rooted yet rebellious, conservative yet chaotic, soft in its beauty and firm in its expectations. Whencut Goddamn sits within that tension naturally, because I am created from that same tension. I am not trying to break the city’s traditions but to expand them and show how they can breathe in contemporary forms. I bring to Hyderabad the emotional drama, maximalism, poetry, and stubborn individuality that the city itself carries beneath its quiet exterior. My work belongs here because it is born from here, even when it does not resemble what people are used to seeing. Every city needs something that shows it what it could grow into, and maybe that is the role my label plays.