HUEMN x R|Elan: Pranav Kirti on making destruction beautiful

HUEMN has always been a bit of a beautiful contradiction. For a label that has spent 14 years making a case for the unconventional – where beauty often comes with a side of destruction, flowers share space with bones, and the familiar is rarely left untouched, its origin story begins with a rather unexpected protagonist – a blue anarkali.

Founded by Pranav Kirti, the label has built its identity around questioning what fashion should look like, feel like and even stand for. Its world is equal parts instinct and experimentation, where traditional Indian craft can find itself on denim, performance textiles can take on the fluidity of a sari, and the finished garment rarely tells you the whole story at first glance. For its latest collaboration with R|Elan, HUEMN brings the Lucknowi chikankari (something deeply personal to the brand) into conversation with performance-led denim that’s a fun amalgamation of personal and the decidedly futuristic.

But beneath the subversive silhouettes is a designer who describes his process as anything but linear. In conversation with LuxeBook, Kirti reflects on why destruction is necessary for evolution, how technology works best when you barely notice it, and why, 14 years into building HUEMN, the thing people still misunderstand about him is that he is, quite simply, a designer.

LuxeBook: HUEMN has always had this fascination with beauty and destruction. What does destruction look like to you in 2026 & has your relationship with it changed over 14 years?

Pranav Kirti: The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.” Hermann Hesse wrote that in his book Demian. Destruction is part of one’s evolution. 

LuxeBook: What went behind designing this collection? How long did it take you, from conceptualising to finally holding the first piece? 

Pranav Kirti: For me, designing is a very intuitive process, there aren’t dedicated steps to it – it’s a drawn-out procedure, it keeps happening until I agree with the idea the piece inhabits. 

Creative work is a lifelong process, it captures everything you are affected by. It does not have a start and a stop button. It changes its shape so many times in between. 

LuxeBook: Chikankari and advanced performance textiles don’t exactly sound like obvious bedfellows. What happens when a centuries-old craft technique meets a fabric engineered in a lab?

Pranav Kirti: Chikankari first came into my collections last year when we did the SS ’26 show in November. My love for the craft is rooted in where I come from: Lucknow. I have seen my mother embroider her saris with precision and pride, and my father wear kurtas with tone-on-tone detail. On wool suiting and denim, the same craft behaves differently, something which we experimented with last time. And this time, we replicated it on R-Elan’s performance-led denim fabrics.

The motifs we designed carry beauty and death together: bones and flowers embroidered quietly. At first glance the work looks traditional, and when you look closer, you realise what it is made of. Technically, a thicker, coarser material takes more time to embroider, but when they both come together, the result feels both Indian and global. 

LuxeBook: Do you think technology should be visible in fashion, or is the real flex when you can’t tell how technically complicated a garment is?

Pranav Kirti: Beauty lies in simplicity. It’s almost like breathing, you know it’s happening, but you can’t see it. I believe technology in fashion should work seamlessly in the background, enhancing the garment without overpowering its design.

LuxeBook: If you had to pick one piece from this collection to convince someone who thinks sportswear can never be high fashion, which one would you put them in?

Pranav Kirti: Our hybrid sari-pants, created using R|Elan’s Kooltex, are the perfect answer to athleisure in high fashion. They bring together the fluidity and elegance of a sari with the functionality of sportswear, challenging conventional ideas of what high fashion can look like.

LuxeBook: We’ve seen sustainability become a buzzword in fashion. What does genuinely meaningful material innovation look like to you beyond simply putting an eco label on a garment?

Pranav Kirti: For me, meaningful material innovation is about making it accessible at a mass scale without compromising on desirability. It’s not enough for a material to be sustainable; it needs to be something people genuinely want to wear. That’s when innovation can create a real impact.

LuxeBook: After 14 years, what’s something about HUEMN that people still misunderstand?

Pranav Kirti: That I am a designer. I think people sometimes associate HUEMN so strongly with its identity and aesthetic that they overlook the person and the design process behind it. At the end of the day, I’m someone who loves making clothes, experimenting with ideas and constantly questioning what fashion can be.

LuxeBook: What is the most un-HUEMN thing you’ve ever designed that somehow ended up feeling completely HUEMN?

Pranav Kirti: A blue anarkali, the very first piece we ever made at HUEMN. It was perhaps the most unexpected starting point for a brand like ours, yet it became a part of our story. In a way, it reflects how HUEMN has always been about exploring beyond expectations.

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