NorBlackNorWhite, founded by Amrit Kumar and Mriga Kapadiya, grew from a chance encounter with Bandhani artisans in Kutch into a 16-year exploration of India’s textiles, identity and movement. Rejecting nostalgic diaspora clichés, they treat fashion as a vehicle for storytelling, centring collaboration, community care and unapologetic integrity over conventional industry norms.
There is a version of the diaspora story that is comfortable, curated like a mood board pinned with marigolds and monsoon nostalgia. Amrit Kumar and Mriga Kapadiya are not telling that story. For the founders of NorBlackNorWhite, India is never merely a cultural shorthand stitched onto a sleeve for the sake of provenance. To truly understand what the label is and, more pointedly, what it refuses to be, one must reckon with a deliberate, unglamorous choice: To be in it, day in and day out, navigating its contradictions, its complexity, and its occasional, breathtaking grace.
And it is here, in conversation with the two, that Robb Report India and the readers can better understand the story behind the brand as NorBlackNorWhite celebrates 16 years of being in the industry.
When asked about how their journey began, they shared that the brand arrived through curiosity, friendship, and an unplanned detour. A trip to Kutch, Gujarat, meant to be a single afternoon spent exploring Bandhani textiles at an archival library then known as Kala Raksha, became something else entirely. The librarian led them to the founder, Judy Frater, who led them to the Khatris, the first Bandhani-making family they would spend real time with. One afternoon dissolved into a week-long immersion of being there — observing and learning.
"Being immersed in the process of making Bandhani sparked the obsession of sharing our awe for the making of the textile, and the stories and people behind it all," they recall. Soon, the first collection was designed, process videos were edited, a website was built around the imagery of their train journey, and new friendships were made in Mumbai that became the backdrop for their first shoot. NorBlackNorWhite, the name emerged organically, somewhere in the middle of a rickshaw ride home.
"Since NBNW has been an extension of our own lives, practices, and how we see the world, it is only fitting that everything is about the in between," they say. The grey space isn't a concept the brand adopted; it's the lived architecture of both their journeys. Migration, movement, and assimilation were never ideas they studied — they were simply part of growing up. Existing between worlds became second nature.
When asked whether they were always aware that they were building something larger than fashion, they candidly admit that they don’t particularly identify as fashion people. "We appreciate the craft, the process and the art in many forms. We approach everything from that lens, so yes, we 100 per cent knew this isn't just about fashion. That, to be honest, is simply a vehicle."
But equally, there was no grand plan. Just a genuine hunger to understand India through its textiles. "We started this because we were wide-eyed with everything we were being exposed to around us — the prints, colours, sounds, streets, people, spaces, communities, and our relationship with India." Fashion became the medium almost by default, and the archive assembled itself, in the pieces, in the artisans, in the cities passed through, and in the friendships that accumulated along the way.
"Looking back, it feels less like a fashion brand," the duo reflects, "but an evolving archive of identity, movement, and connection that we've been building without knowing we would. It just happened naturally."
On being asked if there was one experience that deeply altered their understanding during their travels across India, the co-founders share, "There wasn't one single moment. It was the accumulation of many experiences that shifted our understanding of craft from product to lived practice." Sitting in family homes, watching multiple generations work in the same room, hearing stories that never reach museum walls or fashion editorials — that was where the real education happened.
"The artisans we've worked with are constantly adapting, experimenting, and responding to the world around them." That understanding fundamentally changed how they approach collaboration. Preservation gave way to participation, creating alongside communities rather than drawing from them, in a way that, as Kumar and Kapadiya put it, "feels alive, contemporary, and rooted in mutual respect."
On being asked about the conscious decision to bring Indian craft into contemporary street culture, rather than frame it through nostalgia, they told how it was entirely deliberate and entirely personal. "We grew up seeing Indian identity exist alongside hip-hop, dancehall, basketball, rave culture, street photography, and the internet, not separately from it." The narrow, romanticised framing that so often surrounds Indian craft never matched their experience of culture. To them, a Bandhani print carries the same charge as a graphic print or a sneaker drop when approached with intention.
"Street culture is really about storytelling, remixing, community, and self-expression," they explain. The collision felt natural. The resistance, however, came from both sides — craft spaces sceptical of streetwear's irreverence, fashion spaces underestimating the depth embedded in craft. But that friction, they found, was also the point. "We were interested in creating a language where both could coexist without hierarchy — where heritage didn't have to feel precious or untouchable to be respected."
When the conversation turns to sustainability, they don't mince words. For NorBlackNorWhite, integrity runs the full length of the process: The materials, the making, the image-building, the pricing, and the community. "The idea of how things affect the people in the process, the thinking behind image making and communication, the pricing and the building of community, all of it counts." No exceptions.
When asked whether operating within the fashion system has ever conflicted with their values, their answer is immediate: "One million per cent." To them, fashion today is largely extractive — taking without giving back, referencing culture without truly engaging with it, and leaving little room for fair margins or accessible pricing. These aren't distant observations but daily realities. As they put it, they are constantly negotiating with themselves on how to keep creating with integrity without becoming fully captured by the system. It remains an ongoing process, not a resolved one.
Asked what feminine leadership looks like within their studio, their answer comes instantly: "Care and communication. We aren't robots." Running an independent creative business can feel relentless, even overwhelming — yet the values at the core have never shifted: honesty, accountability, and allowing people the space to be human. "We think that level of care is how our feminine energy seeps into everything we make and how we lead," they say.
Both Kumar and Kapadiya are two distinct personalities. Mriga Kapadiya is one who finds her creative ground in the ritual of a perfectly chosen cup holding a hot beverage, and Amrit Kumar, on the other hand, in the deliberate act of setting up a space before a single idea is allowed to flow. One reaches for baby blue and chilli red as their favourite colour palette; the other lives in the heat of pink and orange.
And yet. Ask them separately what word defines NorBlackNorWhite today, and they answer in unison, without hesitation: Unapologetic. Ask them which craft deserves the world's full attention, and they speak as one voice, “Bandhani, forever, love at first sight.” Ask them which city feeds them creatively, and ‘Bombay’ arrives before the question is finished.
This is, perhaps, the most honest portrait of the brand itself: Two people who are not the same, have never tried to be, and have built something together that lives precisely in that difference. In an industry that has made a habit of taking without giving back, that may be the most radical thing NorBlackNorWhite has ever made.