Like a beloved musician’s album or a cult director’s classic movie, there is a community of people who love Péro that engage with the fashion brand in a way that defies the norms of modern consumption. In an era of micro-trends and the seemingly insurmountable power of algorithms, Péro’s content feels like a respite. It’s like shuffling through bookshelves and finding a title from an author whose words you know won't disappoint. The moment one enters the digital world of Péro, the rules are different. 

With an established community of people who know to look closer at the designs and content from Péro, the brand revealed their Instagram campaign that captures their latest collection, 'Heartsong'. In five verses over three months, the narrative of the collection was shared with the audience through a slow build, starting with ‘The Doll On A Music Box’ from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that evokes nostalgia galore, moving onto an informative array of videos snippets of ‘work songs’ sung by those engaged in repetitive acts like crafting or farming, and then into songs welcoming spring by the Romani people. Through each post, they set the tone for their spring collection, ruminating on the notion of songs as a global language and eventually segueing into the release of the collection in five volumes.

The campaign reminded me of pastoral literature - the slow, simple air of acts like baking and foraging and is the culmination of extensive forethought; featuring a million intentionally curated details. While the presented concepts are mundane, the clothes and the campaign are anything but. From the complex French stitching and quilting techniques to the scalloped hems, trellis details, and swathes of embroidered flowers that run through the collection, the clothes from Heartsong, like all Péro collections, speak for themselves. 

French Inspiration Meets Homegrown Craft

“At Péro, any given season starts at least two years in advance, if not more, because we develop our fabrics. Each season's inspiration can come from various sources. Sometimes it’s just a colour — like we once did a pink winter — or a single character. This time, it was French vintage textiles.“ Aneeth Arora, the brand's founder, started our conversation by sharing just how much she loves to talk to people directly about her clothes. “We start with the fabrics, not knowing the final mood for the shoot or show. As we work with the textiles for two years, they guide the eventual collection.” 

For the Heartsong collection, the designer drew from French Linens, French florals, and techniques like Petit Point, commonly used to monogram said linens. The colours in the collection were inspired by natural linens, beiges, reds, and blues. “We referred to vintage textiles from my collection, aiming to revive an age-old French aesthetic that’s hard to find today. Even our embroideries were based on traditional techniques like bullion stitches. All these elements combined to shape the Heartsong collection.”

While the influences and certain techniques may be French, Péro is undeniably Indian at heart. While the Heartsong Collection was inspired by French textiles and techniques, it was woven and crafted in India. “For French Linen, we sourced it from weavers in Bhagalpur," Aneeth explains. "For French florals, our in-house artists created them, and then we had them printed. The red and white Vichy checks featured in the collection were woven in West Bengal. Since the collection is for the summer season, we used lighter fabrics like Chanderi to craft certain pieces.”

Since its inception, Péro has been working with their regular weavers and clusters. When they started 15 years ago, the artisans they sought out expressed concern about the fleeting nature of the contemporary fashion world and Aneeth assured them of continued collaboration. To that end, Péro has kept returning to the same artisans and innovating with them, season after season, year after year. She went on to mention how she has sourced Chanderi from Madhya Pradesh, Linen from Bhagalpur, and brocades from Banaras and in her words, “These long-standing relationships are key to our collections.”

Verses of Celebration, Not Introduction

As a label, Péro’s pieces are seen and experienced offline far before they are revealed on social media. For Aneeth, showcasing the work that they’ve done for the season is an opportunity to celebrate the hard work the team has done. “By the time we launch the campaign or do our show, we have already booked all the possible orders because the collection has travelled to Milan, Paris, New York, and many other places. I feel that this is the time to celebrate and enjoy. This is when our storytelling comes into play.”

The approach to storytelling that Péro takes is intended to educate and engage their community without having it seem like a curriculum. But in sharing matters of history and culture - the facts and ideas that were unearthed during their research for the collection - they take the community on a journey from the past to the present day and then to their latest collection. 

In leaning into the founding designer’s interdisciplinary background that she credits to the open-learning environment of her alma mater NID, Péro’s campaigns go beyond fashion. As a label, they use animation, music, and mixed media to tell their campaign stories. Even while existing within the system of a rigid fashion cycle, the Péro team takes their time to make each collection and do the same with their reveal. “We want that sense of deliberation to come through in how we release the campaign, revealing it bit by bit, without any rush. The campaign looks long because there are many filler shots as well; showcasing the beautiful sets and props. It's almost like a period campaign, so we wanted to do justice to all of it.” And while most campaigns don’t run this long or take their sweet time, Aneeth’s decision to do so was conscious. 

The collection includes 50-60 individual pieces, that were styled and shot over two days in a Hill Station with a call time as early as 3 AM to make the most of the natural light available and to best realise the vision they had in mind. Aneeth mentioned how a lot of the silent collaborators - from musicians to stylists - put their head and heart into these campaigns, and that it was this that helped them to achieve the final result. The Péro team shot this campaign around August or September last year when their Spring/Summer 2024 collection was ready. Now, with 2025 coming up soon, they wait to start posting the campaign until after the collection is launched worldwide. For Aneeth, this timing also offers a rather holistic experience. She said, “In some cases, shops had just received the collection; in others, people had already bought it and felt part of the campaign. Some people who hadn't seen it yet rushed to the shops to buy it. The campaign serves multiple purposes and follows a tried and tested practice.”

She concluded our conversation by talking about how she looks at the release of the campaign on social media as a means of documentation and celebration more than anything. Aneeth mentioned how she has had instances of the larger team considering the idea of creating shorter or more dynamic content to capture audience attention, but for her, Péro’s Instagram is a way to show the process and in a way, document it. “Even if we are not getting that kind of engagement or we are not being understood right away because of Instagram's algorithm, I've seen that there are still people who know the brand and who understand why we are doing this. For me, it's more important that we follow a certain method or a process even while disclosing the campaign bit by bit and not jumping to only the best parts of it.” 

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