For Fall 2025, Rahul Mishra presented Becoming Love—a couture collection framed as a meditation on the seven Sufi stages of love: attraction, infatuation, surrender, reverence, devotion, obsession, and death. Shown during Paris Haute Couture Week, it was ambitious in scope and unapologetically emotional in execution.

The collection opened with a heart-shaped bodice dress, dense with golden embroidery and metallic sheen. Sequins traced vein-like patterns across the surface—a literal rendering of love's physicality. From there, Mishra moved through a broad range of silhouettes: fluid gowns, structured corsets, tailored jackets, lehengas, and menswear cuts. The diversity felt intentional, suggesting love's reach across identities and forms.

Craftsmanship anchored the entire narrative. Traditional Indian embroidery techniques—aari, zardozi, naqshi, dabka—were executed with meticulous precision by the 2,000 artisans behind the collection. Pearls, beads, kundan, and sequins layered silk-organza, velvet, and satin into richly textured surfaces. Some gowns were engineered with internal metal frameworks to support their sculptural forms, a technical feat that spoke to the atelier's depth of skill.

Mishra also drew on classical art for inspiration. Gold-tinged motifs and mosaic-like embroidery recalled the decorative sensuality of Gustav Klimt, while halo headpieces by milliner Stephen Jones reinforced the collection's quietly sacred undertones.

Colour shifted with the emotional arc: molten gold and ruby red gave way to soft ivory, before culminating in deep black—a progression from warmth to mourning, bloom to dissolution. Each stage felt deliberate, charting love not just as feeling but as transformation.

The collection closed with sombre black pieces, marking love's final stage: death.

It was a bold narrative choice, one that risked sentimentality but held its ground through craft and conviction. Mishra didn't just design clothes—he built a world around an idea, and committed to it fully.