Founders Sharan and Shreya of Day & Age were batchmates at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, studying Graphic Design and Textile Design respectively, where ‘casual studio conversations slowly became a shared obsession.’ Both found themselves drawn to the histories of their disciplines and the overlaps between them, repeatedly returning to questions that would later define the brand: ‘Why does someone feel attached to a garment? What makes a piece of clothing feel like an extension of the self? Can textiles communicate?’ What started as an ongoing academic exploration remained constant through their years as students, eventually evolving into an endeavour that became Day & Age in 2023.
While simultaneously working on a collection that gives old textiles life through reinterpretation, Day & Age balances the past with the present. Their garments are light and breezy, often composed of quilted and layered textiles that carry visible handwork and patchworked surfaces. Jackets feature hybrid creatures stitched across their backs, while irregular panels and soft silhouettes allow the clothes to remain everyday wear. The fabrics retain irregularities in thickness, wear, and structure, allowing each garment to remain singular. Many become one-of-a-kind pieces, shaped as much by the material’s past as by the designers’ intervention.
What Sets Them Apart
What really sets us apart is our point of view. We’ve never seen ourselves as a product-forward company; we’re much more narrative-driven. The garment is important, but it’s usually part of a larger story we’re trying to explore. At this stage, we’re not very interested in trends or traditional seasons. We try to stay authentic to what we’re genuinely curious about at any given time. Our approach is mixed-media by nature, whether that shows up in the way we design garments, build imagery, approach social media, or even in small details like the illustrations on our size labels.
Bygones and Currents
Our brand really began as an exploration into how people perceive and relate to garments. While we were interested in the conventional route of starting with a concept and building a collection around it, we were equally drawn to the idea of working with existing fabrics and reinterpreting them. Over time, we found space to do both. With our collection Bygones, we don’t work with new fabrics. It’s about giving old textiles a second life. We’ve worked with kantha quilts, hand-embroidered bedspreads, jacquard deadstock, vintage appliqué blankets and similar materials. With Currents, we lean more into the communicative side of clothing, exploring how material, technique, and visual language can clearly translate an idea. It’s closer to the idea of building around a theme and using garments as a deliberate medium for expression. For us, it’s important to show both simultaneously.
Neither This Nor That
Neither This Nor That is an exploration of identities especially relevant in today’s India. It questions the notion of purity through mythical hybrid creatures. The inception of this collection lies in the fragment leftovers of vintage kantha quilts from our earlier work. On a random day in June, an amorphous piece of fabric among these remnants unexpectedly resembled a two-headed bird. This moment intuitively sparked our exploration into mythical hybrid creatures. Over the next two months, we studied and developed a series of hybrids, experimenting with placement, silhouettes, and colour compositions. The collection centres on the idea of compositeness: that nothing is singular or pure, and that all of us are made from many pieces; something relevant in this day and age. Kantha quilts are synonymous with this idea, each one made up of many layers of fabric. Each creature was appliquéd or patched onto the jackets, with stitching and buttons used as additional layers of embellishment.
The Importance of Artisans
Artisans play a deeply collaborative role in our process. We’re lucky to have a small but incredibly supportive in-house tailoring team that’s always willing to explore vintage fabrics, despite their unpredictability in thickness, wear and structure. They’ve patiently learned alongside us, embracing the one-of-one nature of each garment.
We rely heavily on their understanding of what’s technically possible, and often on their ingenuity in finding the right techniques to work with these materials. Beyond tailoring, we’ve also collaborated with artisans for embroidery and block printing on select pieces. This co-creation is always enriching. It helps us understand the limitations of each craft, while also discovering how far we can thoughtfully push the process together.
Words Neeraja Srinivasan
Date 20.4.2026
This article is from our April EZ. For more such stories, read the EZ here.
