Rahul Mishra highlights designers’ responsibilities amid Covid-19 crisis

By

Isabelle Crossley

Published
Mar 31, 2020

Designer Rahul Mishra has highlighted the responsibility of brand heads amid the ongoing lockdown and business shutdown and has provided his workers with advance salaries and face masks. 

 
Mishra, who has a workforce of around 1,000 people, offered a month’s salary in advance to all of his factory workers to help them during the coronavirus pandemic. The designer plans to pay the workers’ next monthly salary by the first week of April, he told The Hindu. 
 
Mishra has also given his embroidery workers raw materials to enable them to continue their work from home.

“This is to everyone’s advantage,” Mishra told The Hindu.

“The Kaarigars, who can will stay and work at their homes, and when we come out of this situation, we will have the most beautiful collections to reinvigorate the market.” 
 
The designer already asked his tailors to sew face masks for his workforce to take home and use, giving 10 masks to each worker.

“The one on top of the hierarchy often finds [themselves] responsible for various people — whose families’ lives depend solely on the salary they are paid,” said Mishra. 
 
“With sales gone down to zero in the past month, the inflow of money is completely on halt,” said Mishra, who shared with The Hindu that he is in talks with a number of banks to explore solutions for liquidity requirements. 
 
Rahul Mishra launched his eponymous brand in July 2008 in Delhi, and won the International Woolmark Prize in Milan in 2014. The brand retails from its flagship stores in Mumbai and Delhi, as well as multi-brand boutiques in India and overseas.

The designer was the first Indian couturier to be included in the official Paris Haute Couture calendar last summer.