New Delhi label founded in 2013 by Dhruv Kapoor, a NIFT and Istituto Marangoni graduate and Etro alum. First Indian designer to stage a solo menswear show at Milan Fashion Week, reworking kurtas and bandhgalas into techwear-tailored silhouettes.
Best for Statement outerwear
Dhruv Kapoor founded his eponymous label in New Delhi in 2013, the same year he finished a stint at Etro in Milan under Veronica Etro's womenswear team, following a NIFT New Delhi education and a master's from Istituto Marangoni. His collections rework archetypal Indian wardrobe pieces — the kurta, the bandhgala jacket, petticoats — into techwear-adjacent silhouettes, often exploring gender fluidity in cut and styling. He staged his first Milan Fashion Week presentation in 2024 and returned for a solo menswear show for Spring/Summer 2026, titled 'Foundations & Futures,' making him the first Indian designer to hold a dedicated menswear show on the Milan calendar. His Fall/Winter 2023 collection, 'The Embracer,' used sustainably processed fabric for roughly 40% of its material. Recognition includes the Vogue India Fashion Fund (2015), a place on GQ India's list of 50 most influential young Indians (2017), the GQ India Young Designer Award (2018), and Vogue India's Designer of the Year for womenswear (2019).
Founded in the early 1900s by Ram Chandra and son Krishan Chandra as a saree and shawl business; Krishan Chandra petitioned to rename the lane Gali Paranthewali. RCKC sells sarees, lehengas and suits, not food.
Best for Stuffed parathas from a century-old family shop, running since 1910
RCKC is not a food business, despite trading from Gali Paranthewali (Paratha Lane) in Chandni Chowk, the Old Delhi street famous for paratha shops. Company records place its founding around the early 1900s, when Ram Chandra moved his family from Badaun to Delhi to trade sarees and shawls; his son Krishan Chandra later built the business further, and the initials RCKC stand for Ram Chandra Krishan Chandra. According to the company's own account, it was Krishan Chandra who petitioned the British colonial government to rename the street — then called Dariba Khurd, known for its silverware trade — to Gali Paranthewali, after the paratha vendors who had by then set up in the same lane, and he advertised his shop's address under that new name in newspapers. The paratha trade itself in that lane dates to 1872, when Pandit Gaya Prasad opened the first paratha shop after arriving from Agra; several more paratha-family shops followed between 1875 and 1886, and by 1960 there were around twenty of them, all from that same extended family — a separate lineage from RCKC. RCKC today sells sarees, lehengas, suits, and dupattas, positioned on heritage craftsmanship and traditional Indian weaves rather than food.
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