Lakme Fashion Week 2024: Designer Aneeth Arora on Péro’s collaboration with Hello Kitty

Hi there Kitty is just not a cat, she was born within the suburbs in London and her hobbies embody baking cookies and making new associates. Earlier this 12 months, when leisure firm Sanrio reiterated that their beloved cartoon character with whiskers and pointy ears was a bit woman, it nonetheless got here as a shock to some. Sanrio offers in all issues kawaii or “cute” and with the totemic Japanese model finishing 5 a long time, maybe they needed to depart no room for confusion. At Péro’s Spring Summer time ’25 present at Lakme Vogue Week on Wednesday evening, a Hi there Kitty mascot walked round in Péro, whereas a giant tender toy sat within the viewers. There have been many reminders of the worldwide advertising phenomenon that has labored with luxurious manufacturers like Balenciaga prior to now and now Casio, Crocs and Adidas. But for a lot of the attendees, the evening was additionally a celebration of founder and designer Aneeth Arora’s 15-year-journey and the craft and rigorous processes which have taken Péro to 35 international locations and roughly 300 outlets.

Most style journalists confer with Aneeth as reclusive or digicam shy. She prefers to not take a runway bow, would somewhat journey to the interiors of India than trip overseas (lots of her clients are from Japan however she has by no means been), doesn’t imagine in style sketches (“too limiting”) and is but to launch her personal retail retailer.

On the present, a number of stated they couldn’t spot her. “Hi there Kitty and Péro have many similarities. The character doesn’t have a mouth…we too let our work communicate for itself,” she had noticed forward of the present. Stated work lived as much as the adulation that evening. Of their press word, Péro phrases it “‘Cottagecore Kawaii’, a mixture of cottagecore and ‘grandma core’ that borrows from delicate laces, embroidery and prints seen in mattress linen in Calcutta and Europe.” Japanese floral print and nautical sailor stripes have been matched with beadwork, origami hearts, tassels and hand crochet.

“I’ve been a fan of Pero since attending their exhibition at Amethyst greater than a decade in the past. I really like her use of color, consideration to element and most of all of the storytelling. One in all my favorite collections was a collaboration with Princess Pea, from which I’ve a woollen jacket in addition to a miniature Princess Pea doll that has a miniature Pero costume on her! Other than the craftsmanship, I’m pleased to put on clothes that I do know have been made with moral manufacturing processes”Justine DePenningInside designer

“As a scholar in textile design, I advised myself I’d make my very own material if I ever begin a label,” she has recalled typically. ‘Hi there Péro’ doesn’t disappoint, with Chanderi from Madhya Pradesh, ‘Mashru’ from Gujarat, gabardine and taffeta silks from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The styling is recent and the silhouettes are each female and unisex. “I’m infamous for doing oversize and anti-fit,” she defined. “Additionally embroidery and female items and masculine broad-shouldered jackets. However every thing is extra fluid today. Unisex offers us a whole lot of freedom and playfulness, whereas earlier our menswear was critical and restricted to males’s shops.” 

Extra from Aneeth:

Aneeth Arora
| Photograph Credit score:
particular association

Had been you a Hi there Kitty fan earlier than this collab?

I had lunch bins with Hi there Kitty on them again in class however it was solely throughout the lockdown once I was watching the 2017 Netflix documentary, The Toys That Made Us, that I grew to grasp the journey of Hi there Kitty. I used to be shocked that I resonated with its philosophy and thought they might be good to collaborate with sometime. Lower to 2024, their fiftieth anniversary, and so they approached Péro [as part of their expansion plans for India].

However how did this come about?

Journalist Supriya Dravid who has written about me, from my first assortment onwards, knew somebody within the Sanrio workplace. Once they talked about the concept of a collaboration, she beneficial Péro.

“All types of individuals put on Pero, not simply the artistic neighborhood, although the latter go for her wacky jackets. She appeals to individuals who just like the frills in addition to those that like elegant, understated garments with effective detailing, like a easy verify or stripe. What’s extraordinary is that she has been capable of, along with her layering, straddle each these worlds. That’s her success. Westerners might not need to go for the frilly items however love the French knotting and the faggoting. Her references are very intelligent, uncommon once you see it for the primary time. She stays true with what she began with, continues to attract upon that. And he or she has constructed up this archive that has develop into a world unto itself.”Kiran RaoAmethyst

You might have typically stated that the universe makes issues occur for Péro…

Sure, from the primary season that we launched. I used to be one of many GenNext designers and of seven of us, by fluke, two designers have been featured in Vogue Italia. My distributor Adele Gandola, then a housewife in Milan, occurred to open that very web page and her thoughts was set with only one image of Péro. She visited us, and since we have been prepared with our clothes, she took them again along with her and to the related outlets in Europe. I had by no means travelled abroad again then. Because of her, we had export orders within the first season, and have been in over 50 outlets abroad. That’s uncommon for any Indian style model. 
Every thing else that occurred after felt prefer it occurred organically: The Younger Entrepreneur Award from The British Council, the Vogue Vogue Fund…any cash was good cash for the enterprise. It gave me a whole lot of publicity and we stored constructing our enterprise.

Whereas Hi there Kitty has had a number of collaborations, it shares some traits with Péro…

Take the bow on Hi there Kitty, it signifies connecting individuals. The model is about love and kindness, which is our philosophy too. The character doesn’t have a mouth…we too let our work communicate for itself. And the “small present, huge smile” tagline Sanrio used someday again, for our clients it’s the little one thing they uncover in our clothes, be it a bit coronary heart or a customized button. With this SS 25 assortment, we’re portraying Hi there Kitty’s world by way of the eyes of Péro. We play on nostalgia with all our reveals and collections. Like youngsters, we don’t care an excessive amount of about what individuals suppose or say.

“I had dreamed of a jacket through which I may carry my 9 Museum Bhavan books, that I may whip out and open into an accordion, turning me into the museum itself. Over months of sampling and making variations, Aneeth and I discovered the right answer. I wore this jacket to the present. I additionally show it in my exhibitions. Once I first noticed Aneeth’s work I used to be blown away by the detailing and to how the garments ‘felt’ on the wearers physique somewhat than how they ‘seemed’.
”Dayanita SinghPhotographer

Had been there challenges whereas engaged on this collab?

We work two years prematurely as a model. However when Hi there Kitty got here to us eight months in the past, our SS 25 color palette was fortuitously the identical as their world: blue, purple, pink and white. The gathering has animal motifs, strawberries, cherries, all in blended media and embroideries. We tried woven textiles resembling jamdhani and brocade, and loved the method however it resulted in a really distorted model of Hi there Kitty. There’s a whole lot of protocol to keep up the proportion and likeness of the character, which we should respect, particularly as it’s 50 years outdated! Since we had higher management over embroidery, we rendered Hi there Kitty by way of embroidery and prints as an alternative.

The Hi there Kitty theme extends throughout shirts, clothes, skirts, and jackets. There are each your classics and experimental kinds. 

I can’t overlook the primary Péro purchasers who got here all the best way to my DDA flat [at Siddhartha Extension in New Delhi] 15 years in the past. It was additionally my workshop. Photographer Dayanita Singh, author and activist Arundhati Roy, filmmakers Mira Nair and Kiran Rao, British-Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor…all of them found us there and believed in what we have been doing. I needed to create timeless kinds and so they helped me maintain on to that perception and philosophy. So we nonetheless do our classics line alongside our experimental line, with new materials in fact.

The jacket that was upcycled
| Photograph Credit score:
particular association