On a recent pilgrimage to India, Bibhu Mohapatra encountered the Brahmavadinī — female sages whose hymns survive in the Vedas, women who held equal spiritual authority in a world that was otherwise entirely male-dominated. The discovery lodged itself and became the animating force behind his fall 2026 collection.

In previous seasons, Mohapatra has worked from specific muses and objects. This time he pushed himself away from that approach, toward something more abstract and more challenging. “It was important for me to push this collection in a direction where it’s not literally driven by a specific beautiful object,” he said backstage. “It’s really about the equality and power imbalance. And it was challenging and it pushed me.”

The shift showed most clearly in the tailoring — a notable departure for a designer known for drapery and ultra-feminine silhouettes. “I think the power rests in the shoulders,” he said, and the collection made that argument through sharp skirt suits in gold jacquard and vegan leather. A white V-neck dress with a jutting shoulder, nipped-in waist and tulip skirt struck a particularly well-judged balance between the structured and the feminine. His signature drapery, beading and embellishment were still present — this wasn’t an abandonment of his aesthetic so much as an expansion of it.

The Brahmavadinī also informed the palette in a more direct way. “The color story comes from the monasteries and the temples,” Mohapatra said: saffron, claret and ivory — colours that carried the weight of the reference without spelling it out literally.

Occasionwear remains the heart of the business, but Mohapatra was thinking this season about versatility — about eveningwear that could be mixed with denim, about embellished structured tops that work with slim petal-waist skirts on the runway but could just as easily be dressed down with a T-shirt. It’s the kind of thinking that comes from genuinely listening to customers, which Mohapatra does with unusual dedication — reportedly waking at 4am to read Shopify feedback. This season, he demonstrated an impressive ability to honour that feedback while quietly nudging his audience toward something new.