In my childhood I often dreamt of falling down endless stairs, or my teeth crumbling to bits in my mouth.

My mother’s fascination with the strong leading women of 1980s Bollywood shaped my idea of womanhood. They were no longer confined to being secondary characters, but commanded the screen with both elegance and threat.

There is beauty within unease. My interest in horror films, insomnia and sleep paralysis informed structure and drapery. I studied the instinctive act of clutching fabric for comfort, such as grasping bedsheets to protect oneself during a nightmare. Each garment emerges from this gesture and captures the tension between comfort and constraint, where sleepwear meets couture.

I wrapped the shower curtain from Psycho and pillowy forms around myself to conceal and shape my body. Lacy accents hint at sleepwear but also the movie Ready Or Not, because “lace reads blood so beautifully,” to quote costume artist Avery Plewes.

The collection is titled Nidde, the Kannada word for sleep. My women are both haunted and the ones who haunt. They embody the space between fear and comfort, and treat the nightmare as their stage.