Top Notch | Pranav Misra on 10 years of the successful indie label Huemn: Don't think I'm a designer, I'm a storyteller

IN 10 years since it was founded, Huemn has come to be the ideal Indian ready-to-wear label. I make this sweeping statement very carefully, as I have closely watched how the brand has taken shape and grown to be a formidable label, not with mere customers but a cult following.

Its opening act is a charming tale of two friends from NIFT Bangalore who decided to launch a fashion label because they were polar opposites temperamentally. Shyma Shetty, originally from Mangalore, is a well-organised planner. While Pranav Misra, raised in Lucknow, is a pure artist happy to make mistakes, the son of a poet, and a young man driven by ideas.

“Everything came from an idea,” Misra, 38, the CEO and co-founder tells me. “And from hunger. We were essentially two outliers in the fashion system, and we wanted to create something for those that didn’t fit it,” he avers, referring to the industry hailing from mostly New Delhi or Mumbai. “There was a vacuum inside us and we wanted to find that voice. Huemn gave us that opportunity.” Shetty meanwhile, has moved to Vietnam, had a baby, and has taken a bit of a backseat for the moment.

The name, a world play between all types of “hue” of the “human”, is their take on an inclusive creative vision. “Its name itself means diversity. Huemn means we are all different from each other, like colours in a crayon box. We wanted to have a simple name so that it would reach the maximum audience. My father would often tell me it was okay if I didn’t get great marks, so long as I served society and impacted people. Huemn has a sense of community, this is its core. Our customers are stakeholders to the company,” he explains.

Huemn says it’s a contemporary clothing brand with a focus on handcrafted and unisex clothing. “Being an Indian, you are bombarded with various resources in craftsmanship. We use embroideries for example, but small sizes to promote hand-work. When we have designs that require scale, we use prints. However, we always use traditional techniques in modern ways. Even our washed tshirts are all made by hand, so no two tshirts will be the same. And we may have 3,000 of these,” he explains.

The collections are unisex in keeping with the label’s inclusive core. “An object doesn’t have a mind or emotions to choose its gender. Food is food for men or women. A table is a table for men or women. Clothes are by nature unisex, they don’t hold that value, but people do,” he enunciates. “This is also why I don’t think I am a designer, I think I am a storyteller. We want to deracinate people and show them new terrains.”

Huemn celebrated its decade with a mega collaboration with Pepsi, and a fashion case at Mumbai’s iconic Mukesh Mills. The foundation of the show was life and death, also inspired from his personal life, as his beloved father had passed in 2018. His mother is now a widow, but one who has been a guiding force since his father passed. So the show opened with a normalising of the idea of white saris. There were blood-like washes in the clothes. And their signature leitmotifs such as the devil’s horns. “It’s our second collaboration with Pepsi and we will create a capsule line for them that will be sold exclusively on our website. We are also only the second designers in the world to design a can for them, the first was Alexander Wang,” Misra adds.

International acclaim has chased Huemn. They were invited by ‘Vogue Italia’ to showcase at Milan Fashion Week in 2018, and then participated in the menswear fair Pitti Uomo in Florence. They have agents in Shanghai and Paris, and are sold in 14 boutiques across the world. Hong Kong based ‘Hypebeast’ and American trend forecaster WGSN call them a “mass global influencer of the future”.

“I feel lucky but I don’t think about this much. The pandemic has also changed India as a market and that is our focus. We sell 99 percent to India now,” Misra says.

“I also believe that we have a borrowed idea of sustainability when we believe that we must buy less. Our mantra should be ‘buy more Indian’. If no one shops in the US or Europe for a year people will not starve, but in India and Bangladesh, they will.’

Namrata Zakaria is a seasoned writer and editor, and a chronicler of social and cultural trends. Her first book, on late fashion designer Wendell Rodricks’ Moda Goa museum, is due to be published shortly. Zakaria is especially known for her insider’s take on fashion, luxury and social entrepreneurship in India. Her writing is appreciated for shaping opinions, busting myths, making reputations and sometimes breaking the odd career. Zakaria is also involved in putting together philanthropic efforts in the field of economic and environmental sustainability.

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