Behno’s Latest Collection Is A Timeless Dedication To Their Founder's Late Grandmother

What happens when you lose someone who has shaped your values and identity? When I went through losing my father, what emerged was a large void and going through life wondering ‘what would my dad do in this situation?’ Grief is an emotion that has to be lived through in the language we know best, and for me it was through writing. For Behno founder Shivam Punjya, the loss of his maternal grandmother in early 2024 inspired him to channel memory, love, and grief into design - the language he knew best. The result is Behno collection titled 380, a personal tribute to the woman who defined grace in his life.

“In our family, my Nani's address - 380 Beach Park in LA - wasn’t just a number,” Shivam tells Homegrown. “It was shorthand for love, and for being together. We’d say, ‘Dinner’s at three-eighty’ or ‘I’m going to three-eighty.’ That’s what this collection holds for me. Who Nani was as a person, rooted in love and tradition in a classic way, but willing to take a step into the modern world.”

Remembering Nani’s Life of Quiet Strength

While talking to Homegrown, Shivam told us of how Nani’s life itself was remarkable, spanning continents, upheavals, and reinventions. Born in Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) to a Gujarati family, she grew up in an industrialist household and has recounted stories of hosting Zambian President Kaunda in her home. She endured the loss of her daughter in her mid-thirties, rebuilt herself through sorrow, and emigrated to California after the nationalisation of Zambia, and set up a household of five in the unfamiliar Bay Area of California despite speaking very little broken English. Always clad in printed garden sarees, she remained a symbol of quiet dignity and was remembered for her warmth and hospitality.

The collection note describes her as embodying “a quiet grace of love and generosity.” Shivam shared how, as her eldest grandchild, he had the chance to see and feel all that she stood for deeply. “Being the eldest meant I got the most time with all the elders,” he recalls. “Naturally, we had this bond. She wasn’t someone who broke barriers in obvious ways, but she was rooted in tradition while being open to the future. That’s what I wanted the bags to feel like - timeless, classic, but still forward-looking.”

Translating Memory Into Design and Finding Home In India

That philosophy is woven into 380. Colours like pea green, mulberry, and olive are lifted from her daily sarees - so closely studied that one even became part of the lookbook shoot. “We wanted to bring tactile elements of her life into the colour palette,” Shivam shared. The silhouettes echo familiar forms - satchels, baguettes, totes - but each is subtly modernised. The Coco Satchel, for instance, reworks a globally common design with reshaped flaps and wingtip magnets; a crossbody saddle adds Behno’s first metal hardware in the form of a B logo for Behno. Pieces like the Tina Baguette in Mulberry Napa and the Ina Mini Crossbody in Pea Green Pleat balance everyday wear while still being novel in its disposition.

In addition to the designs themselves, the campaign imagery pushes Nani’s memory into visual language: oversized tulsi beads, a plexiglass bindi several feet wide, and Japanese garden elements drawn from the Bay Area house that was synonymous with warmth and home to Shivam and his loved ones.

For Behno, the last year marks a deeper entanglement with India as well. Founded in New York in 2015, the label has long been a bridge between diasporic identity and ethical craftsmanship. But the past year has seen Shivam spend more time in Bombay, reflecting on his place within the South Asian landscape. “The more time I spend here, the more I feel like this is where I should’ve been all along,” he admits. “But as a diasporic South Asian, it’s complicated. My family’s in the US, I wasn’t raised here, so I still feel like an outsider. Every day in India is a learning curve - whether it’s artisans, politics, or just daily life. Right now, my role is to be a sponge, to take it all in before forming too many opinions.”

This humility mirrors Behno’s own design philosophy. Since its inception, the label has sought to be more than just another handbag brand, instead positioning itself at the intersection of storytelling, ethical production practices, and emotional resonance. 380 carries that tradition ahead, while adding an added layer: showing how emotions and personal legacy can live on through functional design.

A Quiet Grace Carried Forward

By naming the collection after his grandmother’s address, Shivam shortens the distance between a personal memory and public expression. “The love was at three-eighty,” he shared. “This collection is my way of bringing others into that space.” The handbags, in all its quiet luxury, are far more than accessories - they are carriers of memory that ask us to consider how our own loved ones linger in everyday objects, in colours, in rituals.

In this way, 380 becomes both a personal homage and a universal story. Even if one has never known Shivam’s Nani, there is recognition in her - the grandmother who cooks your favourite dish, the matriarch who opens her home to everyone, the woman whose quiet strength anchors a family. Through this collection, Behno makes her legacy tactile, something you can hold, sling over your shoulder, or pass down, much like memory itself. “Nani, this collection is for you,” Shivam stated in his collection note. And with that, 380 Beach Park - the home where the love was, where dinners were shared, where a family found and built its home - continues to live on, transformed into a design form, his way of ensuring his Nani’s quiet grace is carried forward.

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