Raw Mango’s Kolkata Flagship Store Blends Art Deco Architecture & Adda Culture

Raw Mango has always represented a way of thinking as much as a way of dressing — one that treats Indian textiles as living records of place, politics, and cultural memory. Since its inception, the Sanjay Garg-led fashion label has approached clothing, space, and material with a deep attentiveness to context, allowing history and conversation to shape form. It is fitting, then, that the Raw Mango’s first flagship store in Kolkata finds its home within an early 20th-century Art Deco house, deeply embedded in a city where ideas have long been exchanged as passionately as goods.

For Raw Mango, the opening of the Kolkata space is akin to a return to shared sensibilities. “Kolkata has always been part of the plan,” Sanjay Garg says. “The city carries a vibrant cultural life — the conversations that emerge here, the breadth of interests, the galleries, museums, and clubs — Kolkata feels like a place where ideas are exchanged frequently and where dialogue naturally finds a place.”

The store is located in an early-20th-century Art Deco house in Ballygunge, a neighbourhood where Kolkata’s interwar architectural experiments remain essentially unchanged. Long before Mumbai became shorthand for Art Deco in India, the style found expression here in curved balconies, canted bays, and rooms that refused the neat geometry of squares and rectangles. These homes were negotiations between aspiration and tradition — thoroughly modern, yet deeply lived-in. Raw Mango’s decision to work with, rather than erase, these peculiarities is deliberate. “The moment we saw it, we knew,” Garg says. “We approached it as a shop that also holds the spirit of a gallery, an adda (আড্ডা) in the truest Bengali sense — a place where conversations begin and different minds meet.”

The concept of adda is essential here. Traditionally occurring in drawing rooms, college hallways, and neighborhood tea stalls, adda emphasises the experience of a slow, meandering conversation over its endpoint — a mode of intellectual engagement that values leisurely, rambling dialogue rather than definitive answers. The design of the Raw Mango Kolkata store reflects this philosophy. Sculptural pieces made with an artisan renowned for Durga Puja installations anchor the space, integrating modern design into a shared ritual language intrinsic to the city.

The store’s design draws from a deep engagement with the architecture of the Kolkata bungalow that houses it. Instead of imposing a pristine retail shell, Raw Mango has allowed the building’s misalignments to guide the design. Crooked angles are incorporated into flooring, furniture, and lighting — creating a space that draws on the building’s vocabulary while remaining true to the brand’s ethos.

“The process was developed around the building’s original structure and the influences embedded within it,” explains Adityan Melekalam, the founder of Squadron 14 and a long-term collaborator of Raw Mango. “Most Raw Mango sites are old structures that allow us to borrow their history and heritage. Kolkata’s house, with its galleries, crooked angles, and layered past, offered possibilities to build a space that feels rooted in slowness and permanence.”

Rooted in craft and community, Raw Mango’s journey with handloom started as an exploration of potential. As a brand, it continues to ignite new dialogues on textiles, culture, and politics through saris, garments, spaces, and objects. Inspired by India’s colours, philosophies, and history, Raw Mango challenges notions of place and perspective through its thoughtful design approach. Collaborating with artisans from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, and Varanasi, the brand builds on century-old skills to develop a fresh aesthetic vocabulary that is both modern and firmly grounded in local traditions. The Ballygunge space — embedded in Kolkata’s architectural, cultural, and craft heritage — reflects Raw Mango’s broader approach and resists reducing craft to a mere commodity.

Raw Mango, Kolkata, opens to the public on 19 December 2025 at 36B, Pankaj Mullick Sarani, Ballygunge Circular Rd, Kolkata.

Follow Raw Mango here.

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