Indian label Raw Mango brings its ‘unripe and imperfect idea of beauty’ to London Fashion Week

Founded in 2008, Sanjay Garg’s Raw Mango has rewritten Indian fashion for the last two decades. Yesterday (23 February 2026), he brought the label to London Fashion Week for a show inspired by the traditional flower garland

By Hannah Tindle

published 24 February 2026

in Features

Raw Mango A/W 2026 at London Fashion Week — Raw Mango’s A/W 2026 show at London Fashion Week yesterday (24 February 2026)

(Image credit: Raw Mango)

Yesterday morning (23 February 2026), hundreds of spherical glass containers lined the parquet floor of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Hall. Inside them lay tiny garlands of creamy mogra (jasmine) flowers. The vessels marked out the runway for Raw Mango’s debut on-schedule London Fashion Week show, ‘It’s Not About The Flower’. The contemporary Indian label, founded by textile designer Sanjay Garg in 2008, was invited this season by the British Fashion Council’s Laura Weir. Appointed as CEO of the organisation in January last year, during A/W 2026’s opening speech the previous Friday, she noted that over the past 12 months, the organisation had been working to reposition London Fashion Week as a platform for creative ‘global dialogue’, which is certainly broadened through the invitation of Raw Mango.

It’s a sentiment that Garg reiterates. ‘I do feel close to the city. London’s very cosmopolitan. On any given day, you can hear a dozen different languages being spoken on the street,’ he told Wallpaper* ahead of the show. He also explained that the subject of British imperialism doesn’t get swept under the rug. ‘People here don’t hold back, whether it’s conversations about the country’s colonial past or capitalist present. It is home to all of these perspectives, which conflict with each other. I think all of these resonate on some level with Raw Mango. There’s an imperfection to it, and I find that compelling,’ he said.

Raw Mango debuts at London Fashion Week

Garg also stresses that London had no impact on Raw Mango A/W 2026, either conceptually or technically. ‘We have presented in London before, and this show is a continuation of that journey,’ he said. ‘For me, a stage is a stage. Presenting in London is as good as presenting in Kanpur. At the end of the day, it is the work being presented that matters. And that doesn’t change according to who is viewing it, or where.’

Speaking to the ‘unripe and imperfect idea of beauty’, Raw Mango blends Garg’s own ‘curiosities’ with contemporary design and textile techniques, transcending centuries of Indian culture and heritage. Raised in the Rajasthani village of Mubarikpur before relocating to Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh, where he honed his textile design, the brand is now based in New Delhi. Though all that it does ‘begins at the weave’, melding contemporary design with yarns and artisanal textile techniques that transcend centuries of Indian culture and heritage. So, collaborations with 1,200 karigars (artisans) from Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Varanasi remain at its heart.

Raw Mango book image of Indian garlands — An image from the book which accompanied the A/W 2026 collection

Though often romanticised by western audiences, the flower garland is, as Garg says, ‘simple, utilitarian, and so familiar it almost exists within the subconscious of Indian visual culture.’ Accompanying the ‘It’s Not About The Flower’ collection was a pocket-sized photo book of the same title, which had been distributed to the A/W 2026 guests via their seats. ‘I haven’t seen a book that documents this tradition of the garland in the Indian subcontinent, so we just went ahead and did it,’ he says. ‘We commissioned various photographers who travelled the length and breadth of India, capturing the garland and its prevalence in our multiple cultures.’

Here, the garland is depicted in temples and churches; births, deaths, weddings and funerals all feature. ‘When someone buys a new car, they celebrate it with a garland,’ says Garg. If there’s an important occasion in the home, we place garlands on the doorway; and these garlands are not always just made of flowers – there are garlands of beads, banknotes, even spices and banana leaves. We wanted to celebrate the garland in the same way that garlands mark the importance of what holds meaning to us. It’s not about one individual flower; it’s about the plurality. The arrangement, instead of the singular disembodied motif. The weave and the structure, instead of the golden threads on the surface.’

According to Garg, this book is ‘a glimpse of a larger project’ yet to come. ‘Without getting into specifics, I can say we have a lot of things in the pipeline,’ concludes Garg. ‘Not all of them may be related to the “calendar” that fashion brands are expected to follow. We don’t follow a timeline or fashion seasons. Our work is a response to an internal pursuit: what excites us, what needs to be explored, what holds meaning. Some of the things coming up have been in development for years, and we can’t wait to share them with you.’

Read more of Wallpaper’s London Fashion Week A/W 2026 coverage here.

rawmango.com

Hannah Tindle is Beauty & Grooming Editor at Wallpaper*. She brings ideas to the magazine’s beauty vertical, which closely intersects with fashion, art, design, and technology.