There’s a moment right after the jump, before you land, when the world stands still. The air rushes in, cool and unhurried, carrying the lightness of a day that belongs entirely to you. A run with no finish line. A spin that catches the last of the evening light. A laugh that rises before you can reach for it. Homegrown fashion label JODI’s pre-Fall collection ‘Free Falling’ draws inspiration from that moment.

Founded by Gauri Verma and Karuna Laungani after meeting while working at ELLE, JODI has built its visual vocabulary around unlikely pairings: of craft and contemporary fashion, colour and humour, the handmade and the everyday. The label works with more than 50 small-scale, family-run artisanal businesses across India, including block printers in Jaipur, weavers in Bengal, and dyers in Kutch. Its clothes are designed in Pune before passing through multiple skilled hands — printed, dyed, embroidered and stitched in collaboration with its network of craftspeople.

The ‘Free Falling’ collection takes cues from the colours of an open landscape: sky blues, grassy greens, deep purples, and splashes of pink and red. Its extensive range includes Drift handloom pieces, Flow dresses and separates, Sway dresses, Ether handloom garments, Leap Jamdani pieces, and a series of whimsically named shirts, including Gulkand, Sherbet, Thandai, Aamras, and Moondance. Kala cotton grounds the garments naturally, while Chanderi silk adds transparency and lightness; Jamdani weaving, hand-printed fabrics, and individual stitches reveal craftsmanship rooted in time-honoured traditions. The silhouettes feature long, flowing dresses, asymmetric hems, pleated shapes, relaxed shirts, and wide trousers, transforming the clothing from static pieces into garments that tumble, billow, and soar.

It is a fitting extension of the label’s broader philosophy. JODI’s craft practice has always embraced the minor irregularities of handmade production instead of treating them as imperfections; its block-printing process encompasses hand-drawn designs, hand-carved blocks by traditional nakashikar woodworkers, and hand-printing by artisans, including the label’s longtime collaborator Shankarlal. ‘Free Falling’ translates that embrace of unpredictability from the textile to the body. Its proposition is the simple idea that, sometimes, dressing, like falling, is most interesting when you stop trying to control where you land.

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