Yaduveer Singh Bera Is Putting India’s Quilting Craft On Luxury Jackets

Yaduveer Singh Bera comes from a family that has lived in Bera, Rajasthan, since the 17th century. He is the custodian of Castle Bera, the family's centuries-old home turned into a small, personal luxury retreat, and the founder of Bera Jackets, a label built around the quilted jackets and Phulghars once worn by Rajasthan's royal families. Trained in hotel management, Yaduveer returned home in his early twenties and ended up giving a name to a craft that had existed around him his whole life. Today, he moves between three worlds that he insists are really just one: fashion, heritage hospitality, and the conservation of Jawai's leopard landscape, all rooted in the same small pocket of Rajasthan his family has called home for generations.

Robb Report India sat down with Yaduveer for a conversation about craft, legacy and what Indian luxury really means when you strip away the price tag.

He begins, fittingly, with a story. The Phulghar and Bera's quilted jackets were never made simply to look good, he says. They were made for hunting, for travel, for cold weather and for polo, worn by royal families who needed clothing that worked as hard as it looked good. The family still has old correspondence recording Phulghars being shipped from Bombay to London for the British Royal Family. Closer to home, his own great-grandfather, Thakur Prithi Singh Bera, travelled with Maharaja Umaid Singhji as part of the famous Jodhpur polo team and Yaduveer still owns a Phulghar that once belonged to the Maharaja himself. "When a garment survives generations like that, it stops being fashion. It becomes an heirloom," he says.

That distinction, he believes, is what separates Indian luxury from its Western counterpart. The West, he says, has built extraordinary maisons and brands, but many of India's greatest luxury traditions existed long before anyone thought of luxury as a business. They belonged to families, royal courts and craftsmen. "You had your own tailor. You were measured individually. There was an intimacy between the wearer, the maker and the garment," he says. It's that individuality, more than price or provenance alone, that he considers the real foundation of luxury.

The Quilted Jackets

It is also, in many ways, the reason Bera Jackets exists at all. Yaduveer is careful to point out that he didn't invent the craft; he simply gave an existing tradition a name. Growing up, quilted jackets and Phulghars were simply part of life at Castle Bera. He never thought of it commercially. It was only when guests staying at the family home began asking what brand his jacket was that he realised there wasn't one. "One day I simply replied, 'It's a Bera Jacket,'" he recalls. "That was really the beginning."

He sees that moment as part of a much larger pattern in Indian craft supported with extraordinary skill that exists quietly across the country's states, villages and tribal communities, often going unrecognised by the wider world. What was missing, he says, was never the skill itself, but the platform. He is quick to add that preservation doesn't mean freezing a craft in the past. A craft survives only when people continue to value it, wear it and pay fairly for it and technology has a role to play here too, though a supporting one. "Technology should support craftsmanship, not replace the human hand," he says.

That belief in the human hand runs through everything Bera Jackets makes. Many of the artisans he works with come from families that have quilted for generations, carrying forward an understanding of the craft that can't be taught quickly. How a garment should fall, how much structure it needs, and how to shape it around the person wearing it is really essential. Because each piece is handmade, no two jackets are ever quite identical, and Yaduveer sees that not as an inconsistency but as the point. "Those differences are not imperfections. They are what give the piece its soul," he says.

Material And Craftsmanship

Material plays its own part in the storytelling. Where possible, Yaduveer wants every fabric used to carry a link back to India and ideally to Bera and Jawai specifically. The label uses cotton grown on the family's own farms, and for its most exclusive pieces wool is sourced from the Rabari pastoral community, whose flocks have shared this landscape with Jawai's leopards for generations. The label's silk linings are printed with details of family history, old correspondence, polo heritage and maps connected to Bera and the Phulghar. "So when you open the jacket, you discover another layer of the story," he says.

Yaduveer's family has lived in Bera since the 17th century, well before the region became known internationally for its leopards and its wildlife tourism. He sees a direct parallel between what his father achieved with Jawai's conservation story and what he has tried to do with Bera Jackets: recognising something that already existed and giving it a wider stage. "Neither was suddenly invented in the modern world," he says. "The heritage was already there. What changed was that a new generation recognised its value, gave it an identity and introduced it to a wider audience."

It's a philosophy that ties together everything Yaduveer does, whether he's talking about fashion, hospitality or conservation. He doesn't see himself as running three separate businesses so much as looking after one legacy expressed in different forms. 

Carrying all of this forward, he admits, comes with real weight, which is made heavier by the fact that his generation has inherited a far more comfortable life than the ones that came before it. Descending from the lineage of Maharana Pratap only adds to that sense of duty, he says, though he's careful not to frame it as a burden. He describes himself as a custodian for a period of time, responsible for leaving what he's inherited a little stronger.

Royal Fables

That sense of custodianship is especially visible in this year's chapter with Royal Fables. Yaduveer has presented Bera Jackets on the platform since 2018 and as the label's recognition has grown, so unfortunately, has the number of imitations and quilted jackets have started to appear elsewhere in India, occasionally even carrying the Bera name. For Season 16 of Royal Fables, the response is clarification: the craftsmanship stays exactly as it was, but the label is introducing more distinctive markers of authenticity, including refined branding and specially designed linings that carry Bera's own story. "The idea is that when someone sees or wears an original Bera Jacket, there should be no confusion about where it comes from," he says.

Looking further ahead, Yaduveer's ambitions for Bera stay rooted in the same idea that has driven everything so far, and that is building on what already exists. He hopes to grow Bera Jackets into an ultra-luxury, tightly focused Indian jacket house built entirely around outerwear, craftsmanship and provenance, deliberately proud of its rural Rajasthani roots. Asked to sum it all up, Yaduveer keeps it simple. He wants Bera to become a name that represents a very particular kind of Indian luxury which is  one built on heritage, craftsmanship, hospitality and conservation, all pulling from the same source. "Hopefully," he says, "there will be many more interesting chapters to come."