Now Form and Harshal Duddalwar peel back the layers of their mystical identity for Raw Mango’s AGAMA

Ever since it was founded in 2008, Raw Mango – an Indian fashion label by designer Sanjay Garg – has amassed a cult following, both for its contemporary take on Indian craftsmanship, and its intention to revive and redefine it through its work. Its freshest collection, AGAMA builds on the brand’s body of work, and is a confluence of ancient techniques, contemporary silhouettes, and textile innovations – of the kind its audience has come to expect of the brand. The collection features saris and outerwear made from Mashru (a fabric made of a blend of silk and cotton), Mashru Ikat (a textile that combines the Mashru weaving technique with the Ikat dyeing process) and Kantha (a traditional Indian embroidery technique known for its intricate running stitches). To create the campaign and identity for the collection, Garg collaborated with Gurgaon-based strategic design studio Now Form and Designer & Art Director Harshal Duddalwar. The teams began by crafting a story that would lead the project. To do so, they had to return to the collection, which takes its name from the Sanskrit word meaning “that which has been passed down from tradition.” During the research, Now Form uncovered a story – the earliest recorded mention of Kantha in ‘Chaitanya Charitamrita,’ a 500-year-old text by Bengali poet Krishnadasa Kaviraja. “The text recounts how a mother sent a piece of Kantha fabric to her son, the 15th-century saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, through a group of travelling pilgrims. This story became the foundation of our campaign concept,” Now Form’s Founder Vikramaditya Sharma tells us. The finding led to the larger story of a fictitious group of travelling pilgrims, which anchored the creative direction. “We set out to create a graphic identity that could represent this group of pilgrims – similar to how a cult or any distinct community might have its own recognisable symbol. A key theme of the campaign was time; we envisioned a community that could exist in the future, but without the usual trappings of futurism. Instead, we wanted to reference the past to create something that felt strange and otherworldly, existing in an undefined temporal space,” says Sharma.