What custom couture actually costs, and why

The two questions every enquiry contains, asked or unasked: what will it cost, and how long will it take. Fashion houses tend to answer both with atmosphere. I would rather answer with arithmetic, because the arithmetic is honourable.

Where the money actually goes

A made-to-measure garment from this atelier is priced by three things. The first is fabric — silk woven on handlooms, chiffons that behave, linings that will outlast the outer cloth. The second is hours: a densely embroidered bridal lehenga can hold several hundred hours of hand-work at the adda, and those hours belong to karigars whose names go on the lining-tag and whose wages are not negotiable downward. The third is construction — the cutting, the toile, the two or three fittings, the finishing room where closures are stitched by the same woman every time because she is the best at it.

What you are not paying for matters too. There is no boutique markup for a name on a facade, no seasonal overproduction quietly folded into the price of what does sell. One garment is commissioned; one garment is made.

The honest ranges

Every commission is estimated individually at the first consultation, before anything is cut — but ranges help. Lighter pieces — mehendi sets, printed maxis, day kurtas — sit at the accessible end of couture, because the hand-work is lighter. Occasion wear with real embroidery — sangeet shararas, reception gowns — sits in the middle. Fully hand-embroidered bridal lehengas and trousseau commissions sit at the top, priced by the density of the work, and we will always tell you which parts of a design are driving the estimate and what would change it.

The timeline, plainly

Lighter pieces take four to eight weeks. Occasion wear takes six to twelve. A bridal lehenga takes eight to fourteen weeks from consultation to final fitting, and a full trousseau is sequenced over several months around the bridal piece. Rush timelines are sometimes possible — embroidery can be parallelised across more hands up to a point — but the point exists, and I will say so honestly rather than promise what the craft cannot keep.

Why we will not quote by WhatsApp

We are asked, often, for a price list. There isn't one, for the same reason a good architect has no price list: the estimate depends on what we design together. What I can promise is that the estimate comes early — at the end of the first consultation — in writing, and that it holds unless the design changes. No bride should fall in love with a sketch she cannot have.

If you are budgeting for a wedding and want real numbers for your particular occasion, write to us through the enquiry page with your date and your city. You will get arithmetic, not atmosphere.