Day & Age Unveils A Kantha-Driven Capsule Inspired By India’s Mythical Hybridity

India’s folklore has always been alive with beings that blur the edges of the ordinary. From the river-serpents and forest-nymphs of ancient lore to the fierce guardian monsters in temple sculpture, these hybrids feel like archetypes and extensions of how our culture processes identity, power, and the unseen. Their forms aren’t fixed, neither are their roles, and their stories stretch across regions and centuries. This cultural backdrop sets the stage for Day & Age’s new collection, 'Neither This Nor That', which taps into this long tradition of fluid, in-between figures.

The brand frames the collection as an exploration of identity through hybrid mythical creatures. They look to the yali — part tiger, part elephant and the makara, which spans land and sea. These beings once carried an air of strangeness, even threat, but here they become symbols of lives that are too grand to fit into boxes. Day & Age links this idea to the kantha quilt, where multiple layers of fabric come together in a single surface. This becomes a quiet but effective parallel for the collection’s interest in forms that sit between states.

Design-wise, the collection engages craft and material in ways that reflect its conceptual core. Jackets like the Yakshi, Yali and Naga are constructed with appliqué motifs on medium-weight kantha quilt cotton. The Yakshi Jacket I uses quilted cotton, a cropped silhouette, clean lining and side pockets that blend into the seams. The Yali Jacket I brings in metal snap buttons and a boxier cut, while the Naga Jacket I follows the same construction logic with subtle shifts in shape and placement. Everything is made to order in Jaipur with textiles sourced from Jaipur and Coimbatore, anchoring the collection in a slow, craft-focused approach.

The creatures chosen for the collection shape the emotional tone of each garment. The part tiger, part elephant yali suggests a hybrid potency; the makara, a sea-land amalgam, captures border-crossing between terrain and tides; and the naga evokes serpentine mystery and dualities of benevolence and danger. Each jacket becomes a wearable allegory for “inhabiting the in-between”. As the brand notes, these figures “...once seen as grotesque, now echo something more human than ever — our own plural, ever-shifting selves.”

Neither This Nor That feels like a grounded, thoughtful extension of Day & Age’s visual language. The brand pulls from myth, craft and textile history that carry cultural memory with style. For a brand working at the intersection of text, textile and time, this collection marks a disciplined, intelligent articulation of craft, myth, and selfhood.

Follow Day & Age here and checkout out the collection here.

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