„Bringing our beautiful design vision to reality with an amazing team, and sharing it with the world, is my pride and joy„Rajiv Purohit is the head of of Nicobar’s global sourcing team, a mediator between the design team and the factory, who manoeuvres the (many) floors of the factory with ease. For the uninitiated: Rajiv coordinates the designs that are put on paper here at the studio into final orders, and helps those designs materialise into the actual products at the other end, those same products you’re putting in your shopping cart, in fact.

His role is crucial to any supply chain; it’s in those fiddly details, of pleats that are pleated just-so, silhouettes that skim the body the way they were designed to, and the placement of buttons and the precise construction of a garment, that a design takes flight. A stickler for detail, Rajiv has an intimate, hands-on knowledge of every design. He’s at the factory weekly, overseeing Nicobar’s line from creation to completion, from studio to shop floor. We tagged along, shadowing Rajiv through rows of Nicobar’s signature polka dots and a sea of sunny summer colour as he toggled through an endless relay of phone calls, climbed up and down (and then up and down again) six flights of stairs, and stayed cool as a cucumber, even as we worked up a sweat. We saw Nicobar’s spring line from process to process, from the cutting, stitching, finishing, washing, pressing, checking and packing, right up until the clothes are ready to ship to the warehouse. And through it all Rajiv meandered through the sea of sewing machines and ironing tables to where the finished clothing hung, examining a teeny bit of detail on a collar, or deftly slipping his hand into the pocket of a dress to check its construction.