Two days before his Paris Haute Couture Week debut, Gaurav Gupta and his team are in a sprawling workspace with large windows that engulf the space in natural light in the 8th arrondissement. There are racks of garments in every room and the excitement in the air is palpable, even as I tune into the make-shift studio on Zoom from over 7000 kilometres away. When I ask Gupta how he’s feeling, he replies, “Surprisingly, I feel really calm. As soon as we got here, my partner Navki said to me, ‘You look like you’re at home.’ My whole core team is here which includes Navki, my brother Saurabh, Hema, and we’re working with friends, so it really does feel like I’m at home.” In the adjacent room, Anna Cleveland is getting her hair and makeup done, getting ready for the couture shoot. “I’m so excited to be here, it’s all so beautiful and shiny. We’re all nymphs,” she chimes in.
While the designer’s work has been spotted on a number of international red carpets and celebrities – from Megan Thee Stallion at the 2022 Oscars to Sharon Stone on NBC’s Saturday Night Live last weekend – it’s the first time the master of sculpting will be joining the official Haute Couture Week calendar as a guest member. Below, Vogue catches up with the designer for a sneak peek before the monumental show:
Chloe Chou (CC): Congratulations on your first couture show in Pars. How are you feeling?
Gaurav Gupta (GG): Calm, but also really excited. The excitement is insane for me–I was literally crying. The kind of models that I’ve been fitting, my stylist Georgia Pendlebury who’s done Gaultier shows previously, and I’ve got the best hair and makeup artists. I’ve been feeling really humbled because everyone is in the right spirit and you can see the genuineness and the genius of people. Be it my production team, my PR team, the collaboration with our stylist and the casting director, I love the passion that everybody has here and I feel like I’m finally home.
