From her basement, Delaware fashion designer creates looks for Bollywood and beyond
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Descending into Anjali Phougat’s basement in a staid, suburban neighborhood outside of Columbus, one enters a different — more glamorous — world.
Silver sequin dresses; jackets hand-embroidered with golden thread from India; jade and emerald necklaces; and various outfits sit on mannequins and racks lining the walls. A sewing machine rests on a table, along with binders full of designs.
It is here from her home studio in Delaware that Phougat, 40, designs luxury garments and jewelry that are produced in India and worn by people from all over the world — including Bollywood actors, Hollywood celebrities and Miss Universe pageant winners.
Not what you'd expect from a woman whose day job involves IT for a major bank? Well, for Phougat, it's an all-consuming passion.
“My soul is involved in this,” Phougat told the Dispatch earlier this week as she prepared to leave to present her new collections at New York Fashion Week, which runs from Friday to Wednesday. “I can work like this for hours and hours because I'm not working for anybody else and money is not the drive.”
When she was growing up in Gurugram, a suburb of Delhi in India, Phougat helped out at her mother’s clothing boutique. She would draw new designs in a notebook and sew clothing for her dolls. At 16, Phougat won a beauty pageant after appearing before judges in an outfit she created herself.
She completed master’s degrees in philosophy and computing, then moved to the U.S. with her husband in 2008, working in the the IT industry. Fashion was mainly a hobby until 2019, when she launched her brand, Designer Dream Collection. Since then, she has participated in New York Fashion Week seven times and was named one of “40 under 40” entrepreneurs by the Times of India last year.
Phougat has designed outfits for Miss Universes from India, Chile, Venezuela and Armenia, as well as Indian film actresses Mannara Chopra and Somy Ali. She created jewelry that Ellie Kemper wore as host of "The Great American Baking Show" and that Indian model Harnaaz Sandhu, Miss Universe 2021, wore on "The Daily Show with Trevor Noah."
“Fashion designing makes (Anjali) feel very happy, so I am also happy. She’s made a name for herself,” said Phougat's mother, Neelam Dhingra, 66, by phone from India.
Phougat’s style blends Western and Indian traditions. At New York Fashion Week, she will show off 60 different looks on the Runway 7 platform, including a red lehenga choli (bridal outfit) and a men’s black sequin sherwani coat, embroidered with golden wire using a traditional Indian technique called zardozi.
She also will feature recycled materials to showcase sustainability — an issue close to her heart.
The clothing industry is the world’s second-biggest consumer of water and is responsible for between 2% and 8% of global carbon emissions, according to the U.N. Environment Program.
Phougat said she buys old dresses from customers and puts them to new use through alterations. She also rents out dresses for reuse and participated in the “Beautiful Garbage” show during last year’s Columbus Fashion Week. At the time, her daughter Arna, 10, helped her design an outfit inspired by the Statue of Liberty using old magazines.
Sofia Depassier, 24, who was crowned Miss Universe Chile in 2022, will be one of Phougat’s models this week in New York.
“You can really tell working with a designer when they're very passionate. … That's one of the things that excites me most about working with Anjali,” she said over the phone from Florida.
Students at Ohio State University spoke glowingly of Phougat, who also participated in the campus fashion show Unchained to raise money for victims of human trafficking last year.
Shiva Induri, a 21-year-old senior from Lewis Center who helped organize the show with Hannah Mayle, 22, of Zanesville, said it was amazing to see a fellow woman of Indian descent finding success in the U.S. fashion world.
“It’s very cool to see our influences like this. … I feel like she's kind of making the way for a lot of people to be able to also do what she's doing,” she said.
Phougat said her jewelry ranges in price from $25 to over $1,000, and most clothing items cost from $100 to $2,000, although custom designs have sold for as much as $5,000.
Sitting on a sofa in her basement studio this week, Phougat said that despite this being her eighth New York Fashion Week, she was still nervous about the upcoming production.
“I try to be calm,” she said. “But honestly, every time I put up a new show, it still feels like my first show.”
Peter Gill covers immigration and new American communities for The Dispatch in partnership with Report for America. You can support work like his with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America here: bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.
pgill@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio designer Anjali Phougat creates looks for New York Fashion Week
