India is captivating. Everyone projects something onto it. Designers from all over the world arrive with open hands, ready to draw inspiration. Its colors, its embroideries, its ancient textiles – all of this has always nourished the collections of Western houses. India is a source. Generous, inexhaustible, sometimes unappreciated. I arrive there. And I look elsewhere.
A Carte Blanche, a Paradox
In 2009, Anuj Kothari entrusted me with the artistic direction of No-Mad. The mission was simple to state, yet dizzying to uphold: to create an Indian lifestyle brand, for Indians. To conceive the products, build the visual identity, select the objects, formulate the narrative. A complete carte blanche.
He trusted a Belgian for this. And that is precisely where the project became interesting.
The brand is called No-Mad. It defines itself: 97% Indian. The remaining 3% is me – my background, my eye trained elsewhere, my freedom not to know what one is supposed to see. This external perspective is not a limitation. It is the tool.
I do not come to India to seek inspiration. I settle there, and I look for inspiration everywhere except where it is expected.
For the printed fabric collection, my inspiration came from Fez. Moroccan embroidery, with its dense geometries and repeated rhythms, became the source of a line of table linen – reinterpreted, Indianized, but nourished by a savoir-faire from the Maghreb. For other prints, African waxes inspired me. These fabrics carry African visual codes, but I adapt them with motifs specific to Indian culture – a transfer, a hybridization.
Moroccan Berber rugs inspired geometric patterns that found their place on cushions made in Mumbai. Jain cosmology – with its circular vision of time, its rejection of straight lines – became the foundation of an entire collection.
This movement – looking outward to better see inward – is at the heart of the No-Mad method. We are far from decorative cross-cultural blending. It is a question posed: what can India absorb, reinterpret, make its own? The answer, each time, is surprising.
The second reversal is more discreet. But perhaps more radical.
In Indian streets, there are objects everywhere. Objects so present, so commonplace, that no one sees them anymore. The familiar gaze no longer even registers them. My foreign gaze, however, stops.
Aluminum containers, for example. Humble, popular tableware – the tableware of the poor, they say. No one makes candle holders out of them. I do. They become the containers for No-Mad candles: simple, graphic, carrying a social history that people recognize without being able to fully explain why it resonates with them.
The muddah, an iconic straw stool of the chaiwallas – these tea vendors found on every street corner in Mumbai or Delhi – is revisited in metal and rope. Same shape, new material, new lifespan. The Charpoy, this wooden and string bed present for centuries in courtyards and on sidewalks, becomes a daybed. The round and generous thali plates are repurposed as table accessories. The accountant’s notebooks, with their tight lines and rough paper, enter the collection.
And then there is the rakhi. This friendship bracelet, tied each year during the Raksha Bandhan festival, exchanged between siblings as a protective bond. A thread, tassels, a promise. I design one for No-Mad – discreet, precise, imbued with what Indians know by heart.
This work on the everyday neither idealizes nor is nostalgic. It simply asks a question: Can the mundane be reborn in a new aesthetic? The answer is always yes.
A Single Sign Suffices
Building No-Mad’s visual identity means establishing a single sign and adhering to it consistently.
Red. Everywhere, without hesitation. Red as joy in India. Red as fertility, good omen, circulating energy. Red is in the packaging, on the hand-stitched fabric tags, on the packaging, on the cotton pouches. There is no nuance, no hesitation – red is red, and it is given without subtlety.
And then there is Nandi. The sacred bull, present in all temples, crossing the streets without anyone being surprised. I chose him as the brand’s icon – his effigy drawn, sometimes bare, sometimes adorned with motifs illustrating No-Mad’s DNA. Simple, raw, powerful. An animal that Indians have known since childhood and no longer truly see.
It is also the bindi – that red dot on the forehead, a code of Indian life – that No-Mad integrates into its graphic play, always with respect, always with a touch of humor.
Strong. Simple. Timeless. 97% Indian. The press understood it immediately. From its launch, No-Mad was recognized as a brand – not as a project. There is a radicality in this identity that leaves no one indifferent. When a sign is right, there is no need to explain it.
No-Mad began online. For several years, the brand existed only on a screen – which, in India, for an object design brand in 2013, was already a choice in itself.
In 2015, the first exhibition: Design ID in New Delhi. A necessary step – to showcase the objects, allow people to touch them, and observe reactions live. In 2017, No-Mad set up its own café at Design ID. A space designed as a home, not a stand. People entered, sat down, lived with the objects.
In 2018, the first boutique opened. In the labyrinth of Mumbai’s grand bazaar, in the heart of the Mangaldas fabric market – No-Mad was the first brand to establish itself there. This choice of location was not insignificant: a contemporary design boutique in the heart of where artisans come to buy their raw materials. A physical, deliberate return to roots.
Each step positioned the brand further within Indian reality. It is not a brand that speaks of India from the outside. It exists within.
In 2020, it’s time to let the brand move forward without me.
No-Mad had grown, developed its boutique, expanded its ranges. The codes were there – some of them, at least. But something had shifted.
What gave No-Mad its energy was not the red or Nandi. It was the question that gave birth to them. That gaze which refused to look where everyone else was looking. That dual movement – outward to find, downward to reveal. When the question disappears, the signs remain but they no longer speak in the same way.
What this adventure left me is more enduring than the brand itself: the conviction that a brand identity is not a style. It is a way of seeing.
My adventure with No-Mad lasted seven years. Seven years building something from a paradoxical position – foreign yet inside, informed yet free.
What guided me throughout was less a vision than a well-placed doubt. The doubt of one who does not yet know what she will find, but who knows exactly how to search.
A brand does not begin with an answer. It begins with a question no one else thought to ask.
In 2009, I was commissioned to create a Bandit Queen home linen brand from A to Z.I oversaw the entire artistic direction, with complete freedom from the outset.In this context, bath linens were an integral part of the project. A specific moment At that time, I had just sold my own fashion brand under difficult …
The handmade home linen involves a specific production method, a work organization, and a tangible economy. It connects daily use with precise gestures, performed in real contexts. In Morocco, this choice provides access to work for women who work from home, through sewing, embroidery, and textile finishing. The Work Before the Object Each piece resulting …
In 2008, India was at a pivotal moment.The country possessed exceptional, vibrant, and diverse artisanal craftsmanship. But this heritage had not yet engaged with a refined contemporary aesthetic, a form of contemporary textile design that few brands were then exploring. Families seeking understated, precise, meticulously crafted home linens continued to source their items in London, …
No-Mad 97% India: Building a Brand by Looking Elsewhere
India is captivating.
Everyone projects something onto it. Designers from all over the world arrive with open hands, ready to draw inspiration. Its colors, its embroideries, its ancient textiles – all of this has always nourished the collections of Western houses. India is a source. Generous, inexhaustible, sometimes unappreciated.
I arrive there. And I look elsewhere.
A Carte Blanche, a Paradox
In 2009, Anuj Kothari entrusted me with the artistic direction of No-Mad. The mission was simple to state, yet dizzying to uphold: to create an Indian lifestyle brand, for Indians. To conceive the products, build the visual identity, select the objects, formulate the narrative. A complete carte blanche.
He trusted a Belgian for this. And that is precisely where the project became interesting.
The brand is called No-Mad. It defines itself: 97% Indian. The remaining 3% is me – my background, my eye trained elsewhere, my freedom not to know what one is supposed to see. This external perspective is not a limitation. It is the tool.
I do not come to India to seek inspiration. I settle there, and I look for inspiration everywhere except where it is expected.
Viewing India from Elsewhere
No-Mad’s first reversal is geographical.
For the printed fabric collection, my inspiration came from Fez. Moroccan embroidery, with its dense geometries and repeated rhythms, became the source of a line of table linen – reinterpreted, Indianized, but nourished by a savoir-faire from the Maghreb. For other prints, African waxes inspired me. These fabrics carry African visual codes, but I adapt them with motifs specific to Indian culture – a transfer, a hybridization.
Moroccan Berber rugs inspired geometric patterns that found their place on cushions made in Mumbai. Jain cosmology – with its circular vision of time, its rejection of straight lines – became the foundation of an entire collection.
This movement – looking outward to better see inward – is at the heart of the No-Mad method. We are far from decorative cross-cultural blending. It is a question posed: what can India absorb, reinterpret, make its own? The answer, each time, is surprising.
Looking Down at What No One Looks at Anymore
The second reversal is more discreet. But perhaps more radical.
In Indian streets, there are objects everywhere. Objects so present, so commonplace, that no one sees them anymore. The familiar gaze no longer even registers them. My foreign gaze, however, stops.
Aluminum containers, for example. Humble, popular tableware – the tableware of the poor, they say. No one makes candle holders out of them. I do. They become the containers for No-Mad candles: simple, graphic, carrying a social history that people recognize without being able to fully explain why it resonates with them.
The muddah, an iconic straw stool of the chaiwallas – these tea vendors found on every street corner in Mumbai or Delhi – is revisited in metal and rope. Same shape, new material, new lifespan. The Charpoy, this wooden and string bed present for centuries in courtyards and on sidewalks, becomes a daybed. The round and generous thali plates are repurposed as table accessories. The accountant’s notebooks, with their tight lines and rough paper, enter the collection.
And then there is the rakhi. This friendship bracelet, tied each year during the Raksha Bandhan festival, exchanged between siblings as a protective bond. A thread, tassels, a promise. I design one for No-Mad – discreet, precise, imbued with what Indians know by heart.
This work on the everyday neither idealizes nor is nostalgic. It simply asks a question: Can the mundane be reborn in a new aesthetic? The answer is always yes.
A Single Sign Suffices
Building No-Mad’s visual identity means establishing a single sign and adhering to it consistently.
Red. Everywhere, without hesitation. Red as joy in India. Red as fertility, good omen, circulating energy. Red is in the packaging, on the hand-stitched fabric tags, on the packaging, on the cotton pouches. There is no nuance, no hesitation – red is red, and it is given without subtlety.
And then there is Nandi. The sacred bull, present in all temples, crossing the streets without anyone being surprised. I chose him as the brand’s icon – his effigy drawn, sometimes bare, sometimes adorned with motifs illustrating No-Mad’s DNA. Simple, raw, powerful. An animal that Indians have known since childhood and no longer truly see.
It is also the bindi – that red dot on the forehead, a code of Indian life – that No-Mad integrates into its graphic play, always with respect, always with a touch of humor.
Strong. Simple. Timeless. 97% Indian. The press understood it immediately. From its launch, No-Mad was recognized as a brand – not as a project. There is a radicality in this identity that leaves no one indifferent. When a sign is right, there is no need to explain it.
From Screen to Street
No-Mad began online. For several years, the brand existed only on a screen – which, in India, for an object design brand in 2013, was already a choice in itself.
In 2015, the first exhibition: Design ID in New Delhi. A necessary step – to showcase the objects, allow people to touch them, and observe reactions live. In 2017, No-Mad set up its own café at Design ID. A space designed as a home, not a stand. People entered, sat down, lived with the objects.
In 2018, the first boutique opened. In the labyrinth of Mumbai’s grand bazaar, in the heart of the Mangaldas fabric market – No-Mad was the first brand to establish itself there. This choice of location was not insignificant: a contemporary design boutique in the heart of where artisans come to buy their raw materials. A physical, deliberate return to roots.
Each step positioned the brand further within Indian reality. It is not a brand that speaks of India from the outside. It exists within.
What This Adventure Leaves Behind
In 2020, it’s time to let the brand move forward without me.
No-Mad had grown, developed its boutique, expanded its ranges. The codes were there – some of them, at least. But something had shifted.
What gave No-Mad its energy was not the red or Nandi. It was the question that gave birth to them. That gaze which refused to look where everyone else was looking. That dual movement – outward to find, downward to reveal. When the question disappears, the signs remain but they no longer speak in the same way.
What this adventure left me is more enduring than the brand itself: the conviction that a brand identity is not a style. It is a way of seeing.
My adventure with No-Mad lasted seven years. Seven years building something from a paradoxical position – foreign yet inside, informed yet free.
What guided me throughout was less a vision than a well-placed doubt. The doubt of one who does not yet know what she will find, but who knows exactly how to search.
A brand does not begin with an answer. It begins with a question no one else thought to ask.
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