Gursi Singh and Amrita Khanna’s Lovebirds celebrates togetherness with modern, minimalist design

One look at Lovebirds’ recent Instagram feed and you will be pulled into the warm, moody montage dripping in the colour of passion, and professing love for their community.

These visuals are from the celebration of longtime collaborators, husband-wife designer duo Gursi Singh and Amrita Khanna’s creative milestone. Lovebirds turn 10! They call it the ‘Circle of Love’—it represents the journey, and symbolises the evolution and connection with friends. “It’s symbolic of the fundamental core value that we built this brand on. The universe of Lovebirds is created with people, working together, partnering and collaborating with them,” shares Singh. “And it’s not a one-time association, we work with them time and again. Also, I think ‘circle’ as a shape is something that we keep going back to as a brand. It stands for continuity and denotes an ongoing journey,” adds Khanna. In their pursuit of establishing deeper connections with shapes and forms, dots and lines are intrinsic to their endless iterations of love. These appear repeatedly in their prints and have been reimagined in multiple ways over the years.

Incidentally, these dots guide me to their studio in Dhan Mill. The instruction was to look out for ‘dots’ on the glass door as I set out to meet the couple a week after their anniversary celebration. At first glance, it’s a quaint space with equal parts industrial and modern accents. The exposed brick walls and distressed paint co-exist in beautiful harmony with neatly arranged racks of clothes, big mirrors, and intriguing curios stacked in different corners. The ‘dots’ will follow you around. The team is immersed in their assigned tasks with meetings going on in small groups—the ‘circle’ is literally and figuratively present.

For 10 years, Lovebirds found beauty in ordinary things but their story started off with an old-fashioned meet-cute. Khanna ran a vintage store in Hauz Khas village called the ‘Lovebirds’ and Singh used to be a graphic and space designer. A chance meeting at the store is how it all started. “We decided to make a small collection and sell it at the store. There was no business plan. When our first collection took off, we thought about whether we needed to change the name of the store. But gradually it started making more sense. When Covid happened, love became more profound,” shares Khanna. For Singh, the essence of working as partners resonated with the name of the brand and sort of became their core value.

But what’s love without a little lover’s tiff? The duo have strong, singular opinions and when things don’t work out, they take a step back to shift perspectives. “The key is to respect. We try to understand where the other is coming from. One thing that we never do is just argue unnecessarily,” Singh points out. “We also know how to play to our strengths. It’s crucial to have a balance between creative vision and understanding of the same,” explains Khanna.

The brand has managed to launch multiple verticals only over the last few years. They have forayed into evening wear, menswear, jewellery, and most recently a new line of luxury handbags, and their broad appeal to both domestic and international markets, including Neiman Marcus and Harvey Nichols.

In the bigger picture of creative pursuits, the duo has dabbled in successful collaborations in the past—from artist Shraddha Kochhar, photographer Ashish Shah, to designers of NorBlack NorWhite. For them, balance is one of the requisites to gauge the viability of collaborative projects. Singh remarks, “We always believe that duality is much more fruitful than singularity. There is more power in building a community and working together. A lot of times the business side of it is something that we have to overlook. For instance, if we are doing a show in our Bombay space—our alternate little brand or collaborative art space called Communion—these are not very business-led but are endeavours of pure passion.” Having said that, Khanna points out there is a lot of scope in looking into bringing two ideas or trends together and making a product that would sell in the market. Case in point, the SmokeWear X Lovebirds and NorBlack NorWhite X Lovebirds collaborations in the past.

They preferred to call themselves a clothing brand rather than a ‘fashion’ brand for a very long time. They don’t relate to the concept of changing fashion. “Amrita will never give into trends. Whenever she’s buying something, she looks at that piece and asks questions like how often is she going to wear it? How long will she carry it or how differently is she going to wear it?” Singh points out. This collective ethos goes on to describe the ‘Lovebirds muse’—a conscious, eclectic woman, inclined towards design, well-travelled in the world, has a certain sense of responsibility as to how she buys clothes and wears them. Additionally, for Khanna, comfort is an absolute deal-breaker. Being a woman and a mother, it’s important for her to feel comfortable, natural and confident in what she wears. It makes the duo happy when they find the friends of the brand repeating pieces from their earliest collections. It brings them joy to know that their creation has stood the test of time, trends, and fashion.

Known for their proclivity to functional clothes and minimalist aesthetic, Khanna and Singh’s design vocabulary consciously rejects runway trends and draws inspiration from architecture, graphic design, and vintage aesthetic. The clothes celebrate clean lines, elegant forms, and refined proportions. It boils down to reinventing as creative individuals while striking a continuity in design and visual language. “I wish I can invite you when we are closer to finishing a collection,”Singh laughs and adds, “You have to see the madness that entails to believe it. Creativity goes through a lot of messiness. You have to get your hands dirty. And it feels beyond surreal when you see the final product. So many samples don’t pass. But I think that’s part of the process... the beauty of it all.”

The duo draw a lot of inspiration from their travels, hikes, nature, and surroundings. An idea could stem from a photograph of a flower that Khanna took on her holiday or a colour palette she sees in nature. It could be something Singh sketches on their travels together. “It all shapes up on these tables [points to the quaint tables in their office]. The brief is then passed to the team who further add perspectives and a whole lot of sampling happens,” he adds. The duo have a vision to create a space where they can be creative together as a team, irrespective of any briefs or deadlines. “So, if anyone has a concept or an idea, we facilitate it. We also work very closely with our team. There’s a lot to learn from them and vice versa. So, this is why we are constantly creating and also colliding,” explains Khanna.

With local artisanship and sustainability at the heart of every piece, the processes are locally done and they work with many craft clusters across India, using several handcrafted fabrics and techniques. The wool comes from Kullu, handwoven linen comes from Bengal, denims are from Gujarat, cottons are sourced from South India—it’s a circular process for Lovebirds. “We have made an upcycled collection for Harvey Nichols internationally, where we have used all our wastes. Sustainable practices are in our DNA. And I think the world is catching up on it now. As Indians, we’ve always fixed and mended things,”Singh tells me. Next up, they plan to work on 100 per cent recycled packaging.

So, what does the future look like for Lovebirds? I ask. “We’re very encouraged by this 10 year milestone,” says Singh.“I think the first goal is to sustain what we have and secondly, to open more menswear stores and expand our accessories line. We want a better, bigger representation in the global market,” remarks Khanna. “We have a two-pronged approach. We want to expand and make our base stronger in India as well as globally.”

 

Photographs by Tongpangnuba Longchari

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