Inside Rahul Mishra's Paris couture show where Cardi B and Isha Ambani wore custom Devi looks to the front row

Paris Haute Couture Week opened on July 7th with a front row worth noting: Cardi B and Isha Ambani, seated together, both dressed in custom Rahul Mishra, chatting through a show that had nothing to do with trends and everything to do with time travel. That was Mishra's word for it, not ours.

Cardi arrived in an ivory sculptural ensemble with intricate embroidery, couture-level detailing that takes months of handwork to produce. Isha opted for a slate grey-blue look with a draped, body-skimming silhouette from the same collection. Both were wearing Devi: The Eternal Muse before the rest of the world had seen it on the runway.

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Devi: The Eternal Muse

The collection itself was the real story. Mishra's 14th presentation at Paris Haute Couture Week drew its references from the sculptural traditions of ancient South India: the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, dating from the second century BCE; a 12th-century stone dancer from Karnataka; the Tarakeshwara Temple, built around the same period. "This is the most India-inspired collection I've ever done," Mishra said in an Instagram video. "It's almost like time travel."

The translation from stone to fabric was the technical challenge the collection was built around. Layers of threadwork made the fabric resemble solid stone, while metallic zardozi and dabka embroidery gave the garments the look of ancient temple sculptures. Freshwater pearls, crystals and bugle beads were carefully placed to create texture, making every outfit sparkle while still looking architectural.

Models walked through the venue in stone grey, black, ivory, beige and antique gold — skin-toned bodysuits blurring the line between the body and the garment, dense embroidery creating the illusion of carved stone.

Mishra played with motifs that existed thousands of years back — fabric drapes chiselled out of stone — but made them modern through his own lens. The reference point was what he described as reliving culture through the same ideas that once inspired ancient sculptors.

The collaborators

Mishra's ongoing partnership with Tanishq brought natural diamonds and temple-style jewellery directly into the garments. To complete the vision, he collaborated with traditional clay artisan Sumant Kumar to create ceremonial headpieces inspired by temple crowns. Legendary British milliner Stephen Jones also contributed sculptural headwear that gave several looks a surreal, almost archaeological finish, pushing the collection into its own world without tipping into costume.

"There was no idea of covering the beauty of the body," Mishra told WWD of the ancient sculptural traditions he drew from. "This is all about celebrating the body." The silhouettes reflected that — constructed and embellished, but never obscuring the form underneath.

Why it matters

The show ended as deliberately as it began. Mishra took his bow flanked by two of the collection's more striking looks: a sheer, beaded black gown with a large circular lace headpiece, and a corseted black piece finished with a veiled fascinator. He greeted the room with folded hands. For a collection rooted in the idea of the divine feminine and the devotional labour of Indian craft, it was the right note to close on.

Rahul Mishra has been showing at Paris Haute Couture for over a decade, and each collection has pushed the argument that Indian craft — hand embroidery, zardozi, the labour of karigars — belongs at the centre of global couture, not its margins.

Devi is his most direct articulation of that position yet: a collection that takes 2,000-year-old temple carvings as its starting point and arrives, via months of hand work in Paris and India, at something that holds its own in the same week as Schiaparelli and Dior.