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Purushu Arie’s eponymous label reworks Tamil clothing traditions, street culture, and labour histories through an ungendered fashion practice rooted in the philosophy of 'un-gender, un-caste, un-class.' Drawing from Chennai’s everyday visual culture, Pullingo aesthetics, Madras checks, lungis, Gaana music, and Sangam-era draped garments, the brand combines functional redesigns like elastic-waist lungis with broader conversations around caste, craft labour, gendered clothing, and the appropriation of working-class aesthetics within Indian fashion.
Purushu Arie, a fashion designer and founder of the eponymous label grew up in Chennai in the late ’90s and early 2000s during the pre-smartphone era, when most of his understanding of fashion came from the streets around him, newspapers like The Hindu Metroplus, and short glimpses of international pop culture. He remembers seeing what artists like Britney Spears were wearing in the Metroplus pages, while menswear stores around him largely stocked the same checked and striped shirts. Womenswear felt far more expansive to him — different cuts, silhouettes, colours, motifs, and layering possibilities. He moved to Delhi to study at NIFT, where, after years of school uniforms, clothing became tied to self-expression. Delhi winters opened up another visual world entirely. He started experimenting with layering and outerwear, often buying long trench coats and jackets from women's wear sections because the silhouettes felt more interesting than what was available in menswear at the time.
Around the same time, he also began designing draped garments and dhoti pants during college assignments, often presenting them as women's wear and later wearing them himself. Back then, he tells us, he did not yet have terms like “gender fluid” or “ungendered” in his vocabulary, but the instinct was there. Studying clothing history fine-tuned those ideas further. Looking at clothing traditions from the Indus Valley to Sangam-era Tamil society, he became interested in how garments historically functioned as drapes and wrapped forms before rigid categories of menswear and womenswear took over. Over time, those observations expanded into larger questions around caste, class, labour, and what kinda clothing is seen as respectable, modern, functional, or desirable. He eventually began describing that approach through the phrase “un-gender, un-caste, un-class”, which later became central to how he thought about clothing and design. Those ideas eventually became the foundation of Purushu Arie’s design philosophy.
Purushu’s relationship with fashion deepened further once he started blogging in 2009, during the early years of Indian fashion blogging, when platforms like Style Bubble and Bryanboy were shaping online fashion conversations globally. Through his blog, he began writing about his life as a NIFT student, fashion events in Delhi, trends, and eventually masculinity, gender presentation, and ethical fashion. The blog brought him opportunities to write fashion week reviews for the Fashion Design Council of India while he was still studying. Watching India’s biggest designers present collections season after season gave him a close look at the kind of stories dominating Indian luxury fashion at the time. He noticed how inspiration often came from Maharajas, nawabs, zamindars, jewellery, and upper-class histories. Around the same period, hip-hop was becoming one of the biggest global fashion movements, carrying streetwear, denim, and working-class aesthetics into luxury fashion spaces through a trickle-up movement. He found himself thinking about why Indian fashion rarely treated local street cultures or working-class dressing with the same seriousness, even though craft communities and labourers remained central to the industry itself. He also became increasingly aware of how tribal cultures and craft traditions were often appropriated visually while the communities themselves remained absent from leadership spaces within fashion.
Those observations slowly pushed him towards the streets of Chennai. Everyday scenes around him became reference points — women tucking sari pallus into their waists while collecting water from tanker lorries during Chennai’s water shortages, workers moving through the streets in lungis, Madras checks appearing across daily life, and the way clothing shifted depending on labour and movement of the daily life. His father, wearing lungis at home also stayed part of that visual memory. When he eventually returned to Chennai after working in Mumbai as a menswear designer at Lee Cooper and later writing columns for The Hindu, he noticed how Tamil identity in mainstream fashion and media often stopped at Bharatanatyam, jasmine flowers, and filter coffee, while entire subcultures remained absent. Around this time, he had also started writing more extensively about sustainability, ethical fashion, caste, and class through purushu.com, which originally began as a fashion blog before it became a label. He became interested in Pullingo style, North Chennai street culture, and Gaana music, along with the caste and class codes attached to words like “chapri” and “pullingo”. Around the same time, he also started thinking deeply about textiles like Madras checks, which had once been globally valued exports but were often treated within India as “poor people’s fabric” because of their class and caste associations.
One of the earliest turning points for Purushu came during a college event at NIFT Delhi where students were asked to wear clothing from their respective states. Despite growing up in Chennai, he had barely worn a veshti before that moment, having spent most of his life in trousers and pants. Wearing it to college immediately drew attention. Surrounded by kurtas, sherwanis, and pyjamas, the veshti stood out visually and people admired it. At the same time, the experience was deeply impractical for him. He remembers constantly running to the restroom to readjust the garment because it kept slipping, while carrying his phone, wallet, and keys without pockets quickly became frustrating. That experience stayed with him and eventually pushed him toward redesigning the garment itself. During his graduation collection, which looked at how British clothing influenced dressing in Madras, he started making his first fully tailored lungis using Madras checks fabrics. Over time, he kept experimenting with wraparounds, reversible silhouettes, peplum styles, and different drapes before eventually arriving at the elastic waistband lungi with side pockets — one of the designs that would later become strongly associated with the brand. When he first began making lungis as a fashion designer around 2017, many people around him genuinely thought the idea was absurd because fashion was still closely associated with bridalwear, brocades, and luxury occasion clothing.
The goal was never to visually alter the garment beyond recognition. Once worn, especially with an untucked shirt, the elastic waistband lungi still looked like a traditional veshti while functioning like everyday contemporary clothing. Around the same period, his own experiences wearing women's wear also shaped how he thought about utility and gendered design. He remembers borrowing skinny jeans and trousers from female friends and being struck by how shallow and impractical the pockets were compared to men's wear. Phones barely fit inside them. Those experiences made him think about how functionality itself becomes gendered in clothing, where menswear is often marketed around utility while womenswear is pushed through ideas of vanity and appearance. When Purushu Arie launched in 2017 as what he describes as India’s first exclusively ungendered fashion label, the first capsule collection featured lungis paired with silhouettes inspired by sarees, blouses, and Tamil street dressing. Over time, artists and actors like Thirukkural Arivu, Santosh Pratap, Shaarik Hassan, and Amit Bhargav began wearing the garments, while versions of the elastic waistie slowly started appearing across fast-fashion marketplaces as the silhouette gained wider popularity. As the designs spread further, he also began applying for patents for newer veshti and lungi styles after seeing fast-fashion retailers imitate earlier designs.
Purushu’s ideas around clothing, labour, and Tamil identity eventually came together in collections like 'Muzhiman Matram', which drew from different periods of Tamil history and culture. One section of the collection, Adimodi, took inspiration from Sangam landscapes and the Keeladi excavations, whose discoveries pushed conversations around ancient Tamil society and script histories much further back in time. He became especially interested in the graffiti-like markings found at the site and their similarities to symbols from the Indus Valley civilisation, eventually incorporating those motifs into garments like printed skirts. He also closely followed the political conversations around the excavations, including discussions around the IAS officer connected to the report being repeatedly transferred. Another sequence, Semmuzhi, looked at classical Tamil society and the movement of craftspeople and artisans from regions like Andhra and Maharashtra into Tamil Nadu over centuries, which shaped many of the state’s handloom traditions. The garments in this section used textiles like Vanavasi cotton, Madurai organic cotton, and other Tamil Nadu handlooms alongside draped silhouettes inspired by sarees and older Tamil clothing forms.
Another collection, Therumozhi — translating to “street language” — moved directly into Chennai streets, Pullingo culture, and North Madras aesthetics. Gaana music became a major part of the presentation because of how closely the form is tied to working-class neighbourhoods and street culture in North Chennai. During the runway show, a Dhammada band performed live Gaana songs while models walked in lungis, lungi-inspired skirts, oversized denim, and garments carrying Madras checks and patchwork details. Other pieces referenced Chennai’s transport systems and street graphics through hand-painted Madras Bashai phrases and imagery inspired by the green-and-white MTC buses seen across the city. Across the collection, the references stayed rooted in everyday Tamil life, local subcultures, labour histories, and the people he grew up around.
The driving philosophy behind Purushu Arie has always been questions around craft labour and visibility, like the conversations around Prada’s Kolhapuri controversy and how appropriation within India often ignores the histories of Mochi, Dhor, and Chamar communities whose labour shaped the craft itself. As it evolves, the label remains closely tied to its people, histories, and a reverence for the social and political contexts that its clothes come from.
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