The secret to a good life? For Aneeth Arora, all it takes is giving yourself hugs and smiles
The designer for the Indian brand p é r o loves vintage fabrics and travelling to Gujarat. But it’s dolls that she’s most passionate about, from Hello Kitty to the Raggedy Brothers.
THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF MY STYLE Actually, there’s only one: comfort. I know it’s not easy to translate this word into Italian; we could call it a false friend, one of those English terms that appear similar to an equivalent in your language, but which actually carry more nuances. By ‘comfort’ I mean a state – both external and internal – of calm, certainly, but also of quiet confidence and the absence of stress.
MY STYLE ICONS The men you meet in the rural areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Sindh – an answer that ties in with my response on the hallmarks of my style and, in a sense, complements it. I look at these men and think they’ve made no effort at all in how they dress, choosing clothes and accessories that, as if by magic, seem perfect for them and on them. Rajasthan is the largest of India’s states, the eighth largest in terms of population, and its capital, Jaipur, is also known as the ‘Pink City’ due to the predominant colour of its buildings, and perhaps it is no coincidence that the name of my brand, p é r o, in Rajasthan’s main language, Marwari, means ‘to wear’. Gujarat borders Rajasthan, but it is a smaller state, the westernmost in India, and in the city centre of Ahmedabad lies The Calico Museum of Textiles, where both ancient and modern Indian fabrics are on display. Finally, the Sindh region borders both Rajasthan and Gujarat, but is one of the four provinces of Pakistan, a country with which India shares many textile traditions and cultures (calicomuseum.org; Gauri Gill is one of the photographers who best captures the rural communities of Rajasthan, with photographic prints priced between €8,000 and €20,000).
THE VIEW THAT INSPIRES ME The smiles on people’s faces. A recurring theme in the p é r o brand universe: on every parcel we send to the shops we work with around the world, there’s a large round red and white sticker bearing the words Warning: Opening this parcel will cause extreme happiness (Warning: opening this parcel will trigger extreme happiness, ed.) and the message is sealed with a little heart. Along with the happiness, there will always be smiles on the faces of those who open the parcel from India, I believe and hope.
THE THING I WOULD NEVER PART WITH Love. I know full well that it isn’t an object, but the fact is that I don’t become attached to things. It is emotions that create this bond, that keep me close to them and from which I do not wish to part. And at the very top of all the emotions I feel is love, a theme and a word that has always featured in the p é r o collections right from the start.
THE LAST ITEM I BOUGHT AND LOVED A vintage fabric on Etsy.com: it’s a truly incredible platform where you can lose yourself searching for, say, fabrics or textile items. If you enter the keywords ‘vintage textile’ or ‘vintage Indian textile’, you’ll find thousands upon thousands of sites, and what I like most is that many are small shops or artisan workshops (the exhibition Global Threads: India’s Textile Revolution, at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, closed on 5 April but can be visited virtually at bowers.org).
