<h1 class="centre">Dirty Magazine: Tell us, Manish, are you still alive?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Manish Arora: I was just going to say without you asking me, I am alive and I am happy.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Where did you go?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: I never went anywhere. It’s been 12 years that I’ve been living between Delhi and Paris. And after the pandemic I decided to move here, to Paris. It was as simple as that.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: Yeah, you’ve always had one foot in Paris.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: The larger foot was here and a few toes were in Delhi, but now both feet are here.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Are you a Parisian now?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: Oui, je parle Français. [Speaks in French some more] I want to show off. I’ve been going to school to learn French for five months now. But if I have to be good at it, I have to go for another year. I am 50 now, so learning a language is not easy.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: What have the last few years been like for you?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: You know, a lot of things have changed. I did this course called Vipassana in India before the pandemic. This was something I always wanted to do because I like to push myself in various ways. Vipassana is about stillness, and you only have one thing in your control, only one thing you can move — your mind. Everything else is still. You start thinking, thinking so much. And with the amount of pain that you are in physically because of sitting still, you have no option but to come to a conclusion. Everybody’s different, but my conclusion was that I am not my body. I am separate from my body.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Was it difficult?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: I was in tears and tears and tears. But then I started seeing the smallest details of my life since when I was two years old, very clearly. Even things like when my father used to walk me to nursery school. I remembered that street in Bombay. I remembered each and every shop on that street. I remembered the shops and their smells.</h1>

<h1 class="left">DM: That’s wild.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">MA: It’s like, you know, I was watching this beautiful movie of… me. It sounds like a trip, I know. With nothing but water and simple vegetarian food and focusing on your breath. It is the best trip ever.</h1>

<h1 class="right">DM: How did it change you?</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: It changed everything. It made me think, what do I want to do with my life? I worked very hard for more than 25 years. And what is the purpose of that? I have done a lot, but have I got time for myself all these years? No. I’ve never had time for my friends. And for what? I just support myself. I am an only child, I just have my mother. I can actually use that to my advantage. I don’t want to be bound by others or be told every six months on a Thursday at noon that I have a show to do. I didn’t have a choice back then. For 13 years I did that, 26 shows non-stop in Paris and then two years in London. So that’s almost 30 shows. Let me see which Indian can do that. It’s not easy.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: Do you feel liberated? </h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: I think it was one of my best decisions. It was the second big move in my life. The first was when I was 17 and I moved from Bombay to Delhi to join NIFT. I wanted to leave my family.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">DM: Why?</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: I came from a very protected background. My family is full Amritsar Punjabi in Bombay and the only socialising I did was within the family. We didn’t have a life outside it, we didn’t really know anybody. It was extremely protected. I was also a kind of rebel in the family because of my sexuality. I was gay and I knew it since I was very young.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Were you out to your family then?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: Being gay then was something that didn’t exist. It was neither good nor bad. It just didn’t exist. They just didn’t imagine things like that happening.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: Are you close to your mom?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: No. We don’t really have anything to talk about. But when I decided to start cooking we became closer. I keep calling her to ask for recipes even if I remember them already, it has connected us more.</h1>

<h1 class="right">DM: You’ve developed this new relationship with food.</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: I didn’t even know how to use the oven. Just before the pandemic I had gone to visit Bharti [Kher], the artist, and she was making a pie. I asked, can you show me how to use an oven? That’s how it started. And somehow I’m damn good at it.</h1>

<h1 class="left">DM: If you do say so yourself.</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: I can very proudly say I’m amazing at cooking. I started inviting friends to my house in Paris to cook for them. One of them owns a restaurant and said, why don’t you do a pop-up restaurant? I said, of course! And then me being me, I wanted to do everything as a huge production. We did a shoot to promote it and put it on my Instagram. A publisher saw the photos and asked if I would like to do a book. That’s how ‘We Are Family’ happened.</h1>

<h1 class="right">DM: Did cooking come easily to you?</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: Good lovers are good cooks.</h1>

<h1 class="right">DM: Is that the saying? Good cooks are good lovers? </h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: No, good lovers are good cooks.</h1>

<h1 class="right">DM: Ah.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: I was a lover first. Now I cook.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: And are you a lover, still?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: Well, I met somebody last year. He’s sitting in the other room. I met him last January, and I thought, finally I’m done. This is it. In a week from when we met, I moved into his house and we haven’t left each other for a single night since then. Not a single hour.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">DM: Oh, my.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: I don’t know how personal this interview should be.</h1>

<h1 class="left">DM: Very personal. So you’re in love. </h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: Love? Beyond love. It’s beyond love.</h1>

<h1 class="left">DM: How wonderful.</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: I’m glad I met him now, at 50. We are very alike, we have a similar aesthetic. The highlight of our relationship is that we are the same size, so we share all our clothes. That’s the best part. </h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: What does a day in your life look like?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: I wake up early. I’ve always woken up early. I do puja every morning after my bath, I have all the gods here in my mandir. In France we don’t like to work too much. On a non-working day I will bicycle a lot around the city. I will go to a market where they sell a particular kind of tomato, not available elsewhere. I’ll buy some. I’ll cook a meal for me and my partner. We will go for a walk. We have lots of friends we spend time with. We are constantly doing things in the house, changing things, moving things, adjusting things. We love gardening. We garden a lot.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">Work-wise I am focusing on costume-based projects, last year I did costumes for the ABBA Voyage currently showing in London and this year I did costumes for a French opera, DIVA.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Would you consider yourself a religious person?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: No, I believe in otherworldly energies. I do love Krishna though because we can dress him up all the time. He’s a very playful god and gender fluid in a way</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Do you miss India?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: No.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: What is your take on Indian fashion as it stands today?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: Let me be truthful on this. There was a time when India Fashion Week was really flying. With front rows featuring top international buyers, it was one of the best upcoming fashion weeks in the world. There was a time. But then what happened? When board members are designers, everybody has their own agenda. Nobody was thinking of fashion as a whole body. Everybody was just thinking of themselves.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: What do you think of Indian designers getting more international visibility?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: There have been quite a few showings internationally, but to be consistent for 15 years is not easy.</h1>

<h1 class="left">DM: No, it’s not easy.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">MA: There is one thing about the fashion industry in India. Most of them don’t like each other, I feel. And that comes from not being sure of who you are. Let’s look at Indian clothes, wedding clothes, let’s say. I can’t tell the difference between them, they are all merging into each other. There is no definitive style. So for me Indian fashion is kind of not going anywhere. Because for me a designer is someone who says, this is what I create, this is what you should be wearing. You build and build and build. If you start doing what people want, you lose yourself more and more and more. You’re not a designer then. You are in fact a ladies’ tailor.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">DM: Well, damn.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">MA: In fact, the other thing people in India love is recreating history all the time. Take our craft, sure, but make it modern! Why are you just redoing it?</h1>

<h1 class="left">DM: Reviving.</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: That’s the word. It’s already been done in a better way in the past. You should modernise it rather than revive it. Make it contemporary. Take a risk and make it something people will notice. Maybe everybody won’t like it. If everybody likes it, that means you’re boring. I have collectors, you know, in Japan, in France, in Scotland, in America. People have collected my clothes. That is how you build your brand, your style.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">DM: What would you like to tell young Indian designers?</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: Well, I think most important is that first you have to really go deep inside and understand yourself, what your style is. To develop your style is very important. You have to understand who you are, how you are. Find yourself and your individual voice. You need a lot of patience. Fashion is not — I think the new kids know this — it is not just glamorous. It’s a job. You can be a doctor, you can be a lawyer, you can be a designer. You have to take it as a profession which needs time, which needs a lot of discipline besides being creative. It’s 50% talent, 25% discipline, 25% timing. You have to know your timing.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: Okay, talking of timing, let’s talk about the infamous New York Times article that came out three years ago. It is one of those things that is now a part of your legacy, for better or worse.</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: Okay let’s clarify, because I’ve never clarified this article. Firstly I never thought I was so important for somebody to give me 4000-something words in The New York Times. Because there are bigger brands who have bigger issues. I did feel that a lot of things in that article were not correct. It felt like an agenda against me.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: Did you feel that it was unfair?</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: Well the one thing I agree with in that article is that I was not aware of what was going on. I was so involved in doing Paris collections, India collections, all of that, that I trusted my business partner to handle things. I should have opened my eyes earlier.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: You become responsible because you are the brand. </h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: The biggest thing was me not knowing what was going on. That is my fault, I will admit it. I didn’t know. Until the article came out, I didn’t know. And after it came out, I got a lawyer and I paid my share to the karigars. It’s done. People who know me know that I’m not the kind of person who would be able to sleep at night if I had done wrong to the people who work for me.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">DM: How badly did the piece affect you?</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: No, I’ll tell you, it affected me, but yet not as much as people think it did. First I thought, wow, am I so important that The New York Times is doing an article on me? So in the beginning, there was a sense of pride [laughs]. Listen, overall, the article was a bit, if I may say, random. I can clearly say that all the facts are not presented, what is written is not all correct. That I can tell you confidently.</h1>

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<h1 class="centre">DM: Will you ever come back to fashion?</h1>

<h1 class="centre">MA: If I have to do collections every six months? No. I decided to choose myself over my profession. For now I’m very excited to do my second recipe book. There are also some big projects coming up but I can’t tell you about them yet.</h1>

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<h1 class="right">DM: What inspires you today?</h1>

<h1 class="right">MA: This city. Constantly. How do I explain Paris to people? It’s very small, I can cycle the whole city. It’s very small but it has the largest concentration of creative people in the world. So they’re oozing out, they’re like bursting out of windows, man, living in these tiny little apartments. There’s so much to learn from them. That’s very stimulating for me.</h1>

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<h1 class="left">DM: This is your first interview in years, there is a lot of curiosity about your life.</h1>

<h1 class="left">MA: Yeah, that is nice. But it is very Indian also. People are really concerned about others. I say focus on yourself. Could be better for you.</h1>

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