Sahiba Dutt Munjal

Founder, Anahee

I didn't start Anahee because I dreamt of running a fashion label. I started it standing in front of my own wardrobe, running late, holding two hangers, muttering something not very polite under my breath.

I had a job I loved — back-to-back meetings, calls that ran into the evening, and then somehow a dinner or a birthday squeezed into whatever hour was left. My calendar could handle it. My clothes never could. And this isn't just a working woman's problem — ask any homemaker and she'll tell you the same story with different characters: school run, kitchen, guests dropping by, a function to dress "properly" for by evening. Different schedule, same wardrobe panic.

Here's the part nobody talks about — the hours we lose just changing clothes. Home to get ready, back home to change, out again because plans shifted. I've spent more time stuck in traffic going home to change than at the actual event. Add it up across a year of weddings and workdays, and it's not hours, it's days of our life spent on the road for one thing — a different outfit.

That's the problem I set out to solve. Which is why our co-ord sets, resort wear, and sarees are built the way they are — not around a season, but around a woman's actual day. A co-ord that goes from a 9 AM review to a friend's sundowner. A saree that survives a full day of rituals without re-pinning. Resort wear that doesn't stop working the moment the vacation ends. Every design is made to fit the schedule of a woman playing five roles before lunch.

And none of this happens because I sketch something pretty one afternoon. It happens in rounds — a print that looks nothing like the swatch once it's stitched, a colour gone wrong under studio light, a sample that's 90% right and gets sent back anyway. Some designs are revised three times before they're right. Then comes the shoot, the theme, the campaign, figuring out what our page should even look like, and a website rebuilt more than once so it finally does the outfit justice.

I say this because Anahee isn't "me." It's a designer redoing a print for the fourth time without complaining, a tailor unpicking a seam at 9 PM, someone up till 2 AM fixing a page before launch. Every outfit carries a piece of someone's very long day.

So when you wear Anahee — to a boardroom, a mehendi, a beach, or just a Tuesday that turned into something else — know it was made by people who understand your day, because it looks a lot like ours too.