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Why can’t invitations beryllium bespoke, conscionable similar couture? This was the archetypal thought Puneet Gupta, a National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) graduate, acceptable retired to explore. Today, his eponymous brand, Puneet Gupta Invitations, has firmly established itself successful India’s luxury invitation and gifting industry. By blending Parisian chic with Indian craftsmanship, Gupta creates invitations helium considers “works of art,” utilizing materials similar good fabrics, French papers, wood, and metal.
Gupta’s portfolio boasts personage weddings for Ali Fazal and Richa Chadha, Rana Daggubati and Miheeka Bajaj, Randeep Hooda and Lin Laishram, and collaborations for the web series Made successful Heaven. Recently, helium crafted luxury invitations for the IIFA Awards 2024 arsenic an authoritative spouse and was honoured by the IIFA organizers alongside Shah Rukh Khan and Karan Johar astatine a peculiar lawsuit successful Mumbai.
In an exclusive interrogation with indianexpress.com, Gupta reflects connected what defines luxury invitations, his journey, his acquisition with IIFA 2024, and wherever helium draws his inspiration.
Q- Tell america astir your journey.
Puneet Gupta – From a young age, I was drawn to trade and Indian culture. NIFT refined my skills, and I discovered a existent passionateness for graphic plan and ocular communication. I graduated from NIFT with a golden medal. I recognised a dearth of bully lawsuit invitations—a realisation that shaped my vocation path. Naturally, with roots successful India’s premier manner institute, I chose the manner manufacture to create meaningful, experiential invitations for designers and luxury brands. Early successful my career, I had the privilege of exhibiting my graphic products and artwork astatine planetary creation and plan fairs, from Sweden to London, Los Angeles, and Milan. This vulnerability offered invaluable insights into the planetary plan country and gave maine a holistic position connected the industry. Thus began my travel successful plan successful 2009—a way affluent with fulfillment, growth, and its just stock of challenges.
Q- How was the acquisition designing for IIFA 2024?
Puneet Gupta: It was memorable. For the 2024 IIFA Awards, we took the conception beyond contented with a meticulously crafted achromatic leatherette question suitcase. This bespoke portion symbolised IIFA’s planetary travel implicit the years, featuring stamps from erstwhile grant locations crossed Asia, London, South Africa, Malaysia, and the USA. Elegantly adorned with a subtle matte IIFA trophy and secured with rotating locks, the suitcase offered functionality and refined aesthetics. Inside, guests were treated to a curated postulation inspired by Abu Dhabi’s vibrant culture: semi-precious 24K agate crystal glasses, jars, and trays reflecting Islamic artistry, a reed diffuser infused with the blase scent of White Oud, and a enactment of indulgent Arabic dates. This plan celebrated the tone of IIFA arsenic an planetary question alternatively than simply an awards ceremony.
Puneet Gupta astatine IIFA 2024 with Karan Johar and Shah Rukh Khan (Source: PR Handout)
Q – What is the ideation process for a bespoke wedding invite?
Puneet Gupta: In our culture, wedding cards are acold much than invitations—they’re a archetypal content of a expansive celebration, transportation taste and spiritual significance, and blessings for the couple. Often reflecting a family’s heritage, they’re besides symbols of sophistication, crafted with luxurious materials and intricate designs. To me, each wedding paper is an creator hold of a couple’s story.
I ventured into wedding invitations erstwhile a firm lawsuit sought thing unsocial for their wedding. This opened a caller originative path, starring maine to plan wedding invitations similar manner couture. My process starts with a elaborate consultation to seizure the couple’s vision, followed by mood boards and sketches, and finishes with handcrafted details similar embroidery and foiling. Typically, the process takes 4 to 8 weeks, ensuring each paper is arsenic meaningful arsenic it is memorable.
Q – What inspires your originative flair?
Puneet Gupta: Nature, Indian creation and craft, and my planetary question experiences signifier the instauration of my originative flair. I find immense inspiration successful the intricate details of the earthy satellite — the textures, colours, and patterns that hap organically successful landscapes, flora, and fauna. Indian creation and craft, with its affluent practice and heavy taste significance, has ever been adjacent to my heart. The vibrant techniques, accepted craftsmanship, and timeless motifs are elements that I emotion to research and reinterpret successful modern contexts. My planetary travels person further expanded my design palette, exposing maine to divers aesthetics and cultures that blend seamlessly with my roots, helping maine make unsocial and meaningful designs that archer a story, merging the accepted with the contemporary.
Q – What would you number arsenic your turning constituent successful your personage wedding paper plan journey?
Puneet Gupta: I deliberation the turning constituent was erstwhile comedian Bharti Singh came to maine successful Delhi to get her wedding invites designed. That was our precise archetypal measurement into a wedding, and an invitation plan that genuinely reflected her personality.
Q- The Ali-Richa wedding invitation had a retro 90s consciousness to it. What was the process of designing that invite?
Puneet Gupta: The plan process for Ali and Richa’s wedding invitation began earlier the Covid-19 pandemic and was interrupted by it. When wedding readying resumed, we revisited our archetypal concepts, drafting connected what resonated, to make a caller desi, playful invitation that genuinely represented them arsenic a couple.
The invitation had a nostalgic, retro 90s consciousness and was crafted arsenic a matchbox labeled “Couple Matches,” featuring quirky sketches of Richa and Ali successful accepted attire connected a bicycle. Inside, guests recovered a keepsake matchbox with the invitation printed connected the back, accompanied by favourite puerility candies and desi treats—such arsenic “Poli ki Goli” and “Guddu Pan,” inspired by the couple’s on-screen personas. The invite’s caricatures had Richa successful a reddish saree and Ali successful a blazer, each stylised successful vibrant pop-art.
Their emotion for creation was woven passim the celebrations, from Richa’s bridal henna incorporating the invitation logo to lawsuit signage and a ample people of the save-the-date astatine the venue, capturing their unsocial Bollywood-inspired emotion story.
Q. What are immoderate of the unique/bizarre invites that you person designed?
Puneet Gupta: One invitation was a gothic, dark-humour-inspired plan for a mates who loved Lord of the Rings and wanted their wedding invitation to bespeak that passion. We often propulsion originative boundaries, but arsenic a liable designer, my extremity is to onslaught a good equilibrium betwixt honouring the family’s traditions and capturing the couple’s unique, bold choices.
Q. What’s the powerfulness of handmade successful a integer world?
Puneet Gupta: In today’s time and property of wide accumulation and epoch of integer messaging, handmade is genuinely a luxury and volition stay so.
Q. If not an invitation designer, what would you person been and why?
Puneet Gupta: I would person chosen different creative, non-conventional career––maybe arsenic a stylist.
Q. Who bash you privation to plan for successful the adjacent fewer years?
Puneet Gupta: Maybe for the Grammys oregon the Oscars…
Q. Any regrets?
Puneet Gupta: No regrets, my decisions person been excavation and I instrumentality my nonaccomplishment excessively with pride.
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