I had a vision of a young man, stepping foot on French soil, with just a suitcase in hand, and dreams in his eyes of making it big. I thought I would get to hear about how tough it was. How he had sleepless nights. How he was kicked around. I anticipated Bollywood material drama. What I got was the opposite. I can almost hear him laughing while reading this.
…Mr. Nair’s origins are unlike any designer you may have met.
Ramesh Nair, the Artistic Director at Joseph Duclos, a haute maroquinerie brand from France, is a revivalist genius. Unlike most designers, however, he is humble and extremely simple. A man dedicated to his craft. A man whispered about in serious design circles. A man, whose creations have been worn by the top-end of celebrities, such as France’s first lady Brigitte Macron, Carla Bruni and Taylor Swift.
But his claim to fame is not by who’s worn his creations. It’s the way he sculpts his handbags, the way he plays with materials, and the way he truly creates luxury in its purest form that have catapulted him to the pinnacle of the luxury hierarchy.
To understand anything, though, you have to understand the origins. And Mr. Nair’s origins are unlike any designer you may have met.
Where fashion begins
“You are talking about my journey which is like a fossil discovery,” Mr. Nair said. “Does 1986 ring a bell? Were you guys even born?” he asked all of us in the room. I was slowly grasping his subtle humor. “When we all sheepishly swiveled a ‘no’, he said, “Well, that’s where the journey starts.”

Indian-born, Mr. Nair finished his college degree in zoology in 1986, with no idea what to do next. “In those days in India, there were very few options in life. You either became an engineer or a doctor. In my case it was the army,” he remembers. Mr. Nair belongs to a military family. Obviously he was not too thrilled with that option.
“But the few things that I did know was that I could draw. I am slightly dyslexic, so was trying to find a voice. And fashion didn’t exist in India at that time. When I say didn’t exist, it really didn’t exist,” he says. There were manufacturing and textile export companies, but not many ‘design’ companies with stores – in the modern sense – existed during that era of India.
One fine day, an advertisement for Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, caught his eye. They were opening in India (now known as National Institute of Fashion Technology), in conjunction with the Government of India, which was trying to promote the country’s savoir faire. And it was a “fancy ad” on one of the last two pages of the newspaper, which were usually reserved for classified job ads. “The ad said ‘Ministry of Textiles’ at the bottom. And the only way I could convince my dad was the ministry part. Otherwise he would have never agreed,” Mr. Nair remembers. With enough MBBS exams under his belt and one foot inside Indian Military Academy – in his own words – he turned around and joined the institute. “I managed to escape, and start something with no idea where it would lead.”
But not all was roses even after that. After graduating, this first batch got jobs in India, but not exactly doing what they had in mind. They had learnt design and couture. What they ended up doing was facilitating production for assembly lines. After working for a long time in India, Mr. Nair got a scholarship in 1993 to work for a couturière in Italy. His view of fashion, the world, and himself changed here. “It was in Italy I realized that maybe I am as good as the people here,” he said. After a series of movements here and there, during which he worked for the legendary Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, he finally landed in Paris in 1999, for good.
“We designers are a bunch of egoistic, pathetic creatures. But Martin is human.”
After studying at Institut Français de la Mode and interning at Christian Lacroix, his life turned around. He joined Hermes. The rest is well-known. He first worked under Belgian designer Martin Margiela, and later under Jean-Paul Gaultier, at Hermes.
Mr. Nair admits being greatly influenced by Mr. Margiela. “We designers are a bunch of egoistic, pathetic creatures. But Martin is human. And he is the most talented designer I have ever seen or researched. From the old generations to the current, you can’t beat that man. He helped me find my style; my voice and my rhythm.”
After almost 10 years at Hermes, Mr. Nair’s career took another major turn. He was hired by Bernard Arnault of LVMH as Artistic Director of Moynat – a leather goods and trunks brand – which had laid dormant for 30 years and had just been bought by the conglomerate. It was a tall order considering the storied heritage of Moynat. But he re-built it into a successful brand, giving it his impeccable taste and class, and quitting it after 10 years.
Mr. Nair was at a crossroad, again. It was the middle of COVID, and he was just packing his bags at Moynat. “There were these discussions of starting a new brand, and I was approached a couple of times. But I wasn’t sure about it. I wasn’t sure about getting into bags again. I was really thinking of taking a break, and COVID was a good time to sit back and maybe do painting or I don’t know what,” he said quirkily. Becoming a musician maybe – he says laughing. “I met with Franck [Dahan], who is the owner of the company, and we had a good conversation. He told me about this idea, and I thought about it. There was a part of me that was not sure, but there was also a part of me that was challenged. Because when you are starting from scratch, from zero, it’s a huge challenge. And plus he accepted the fact that we work with the same artisans.” What also helped was that Mr. Dahan gave him control over the brand – just like he had at Moynat.

With 20 years of experience at two of the most elitist luxury brands, and four more at Joseph Duclos now, one might feel that his story is like a fairy tale. It was anything but that. Those who know France, and the French, will know what I am indicating. “It was painful, painful, painful. You have to work 3X at everything,” Mr. Nair concurred.
This was topped by the language barrier. While he didn’t take French language classes, experience taught him. He narrates a story: “It was in my early days in Paris when I was still in school. I was standing in the metro one day, listening to people around me, and I couldn’t understand anything what they were saying. And I was like this is it. I don’t know what I am going to do. I have landed myself here, I have no idea where I am going, or what’s going to happen. I should just pack up and go back. I would think about this often. And then fast forward a few years. I was standing at the same spot again, hearing people talk around me, and this time, I could understand what they were saying – each and every word! Then I knew something had clicked…something had happened.”
As a testament to his submergence into French, while talking to me, there were multiple times when he was thinking in French, and trying to translate it in English for me, instead of the reverse. “I learnt French out of desperation. You are working in an atelier, you can’t explain what you want to do with something, you learn,” he says matter-of-factly.
The art of jugaad
This squarely landed us into the zone of jugaad. For those who don’t know, jugaad is a special Indian skill of creative problem-solving utilizing the minimum resources available. And it’s not a skill that you actively learn. It’s something you ingrain in your life in India. It’s culture. And so is resilience.
Mr. Nair credits the resilience that got embedded into him during his life in India for his success in France – “It’s difficult to tell people that in those times, you are working in a unit, and the machines are not working because the electricity has been cut off for load-shedding. It used to happen all the time in Delhi. But you have an order to deliver. So what do you do. Sometimes people come and tell you to shut down your unit because it’s illegal. What do you do? You pack everything up and take it somewhere else. All these experiences make you stronger. It makes you learn over time.”

Expanding on his experiences, Mr. Nair goes back to his time in Italy when he was working for a couturier, who was doing his first couture show. He asked Mr. Nair if he knew embroidery. “I thought he meant knowing about embroideries. I said I do,” he said. What happened next was unexpected. “He gave me a bag full of tiger’s eye stones and told me to embroider a jacket. I said ok. Usually you ask craftsmen or artisans to embroider. And we didn’t have phones at that time to call someone for help. So I tried a few things, it was ok. Tried some more techniques, and it worked. It took me 2-3 months of sewing – I had blisters on my fingers – but I made it. It was purely jugaad. You can’t stand up and say I can’t do it. You just figure it out and do it.”
The necessities of fashion
Mr. Nair’s career trajectory has quietly, but surely, led him towards limited production, exclusive goods brands. And this definitely happened so by choice, not chance. “I have worked with mass production brands before, but I realized that the connection with the people doesn’t exist – not clients, but the artisans.”
He reminisces his time working at big companies in India, where the line would start at one end of the room, run a kilometre long, and the shirt comes out at the other end of the line – in five minutes. “When you have passed through that, you want to slow things down to normal human time. You want to show people what the other person’s talents and capabilities are.” He mentions that the most exciting part of his day is talking to artisans and having long conversations.
He doesn’t see the necessity in working for a bigger production house. “If I do work for a big house, I would try to slow them down,” he says with a benign, Buddha smile, and a twinkle in his eyes.
Mr. Nair’s advocacy for slow fashion extends to his style of working too, which he calls more organic and a free-thinking process. “I don’t look at the colour or the size or the shape. Some time people would give me Excel sheets dictating to make three bags for the evening, one for the day. I would pretend to look interested, but then throw it out of the window.” Plan de collections and declinations (the process of multiplying the same design on different silhouettes) don’t excite him. “A lot of times I find that as a limiting factor. If you want to make a waistcoat, make something different!”
“I never look at trends.”
Forecasting trends in advance, trying to predict what people will be buying, is another fashion process he is not too keen on. “I feel we are partly in this robotic stage because of forecasting.” His labyrinthian memory pours forth another story on meeting a group of youngsters, working for an agency, who were feeding data in Excel sheets on what customers have bought in the past five years and accordingly forecast what they are going to buy in the next five years. “That doesn’t make it design,” he says almost irritably. “I never look at trends.”
Instead, when he starts creating a bag, it usually starts from the closure, or the clasp. A small detail leads to picking up fire for the rest of the creation. And then he factors in the kind of leather it’s going to be – structured or soft. If it’s a tote, then what’s the handle going to be. Perhaps, that’s the reason why Joseph Duclos bags have jaw-dropping closures. Each collection has a different one, a strong one. While Diane has a sort of an arrow, or a sword, as a clasp, Saint-Clair shows off a JD coat of arms on the clasp.
Leather, and all things related
“I am vegetarian, I don’t eat meat. But there’s something beautiful about skin. It’s a living, breathing material. Leather changes with time. It can get scratched – especially if you use real leather. With time it gets better and better and better. It doesn’t fall apart,” said Mr. Nair. To prove his admiration further, he pointed out how, during archeological digs, archeologists would find items made of not just stone, iron and jewels, but also leather – largely intact.
Perhaps he anticipated my next question, mentioning that the leather they source for Joseph Duclos comes as a by-product from the food industry. “We are one of the most eco-utilitarian brands around. We are part of the food industry where the leather is truly the left over. And if you use proper tanning processes, you wouldn’t get too much pollution.” The leather is coming from eco-friendly tanneries “100 per cent” according to Mr. Nair. “I know the tanneries,” he emphasizes. Indeed, France has one of the world’s strictest environmental laws when it comes to leather production.
Leather, in fact, has been quite a shadow for Mr. Nair. He explains: “…I have worked with a trunk maker which became a bag company; a saddle maker which became a clothing, scarfs and an entire lifestyle company, and here is a leather company, which is a base material. It’s like you have clay in your hands and they ask you for a sculpture.”
All Joseph Duclos collections are named as a tribute to the historic legacy of the house of Joseph Duclos – a leather manufactory – which was now turning into a leather goods brand.
For those who don’t know, Joseph Duclos de Bouillas, born in Toulouse in 1719, inherited three leather tanneries in Lectoure, France. Consolidating, and expanding his inheritance, he combined them into a single manufacture, bringing a hundred craftsmen under one roof, and encouraging them to develop the best leather innovations with a unique finish. In 1754, King Louis XV recognised the quality of Duclos’ work. To encourage him to develop a deluxe leather without equal in Europe, the king signed his Letters Patent, marking the opening of the Royal Leather Manufacture. It’s like giving a Royal Patent.
“I actually washed my hands in the Diane,” says Mr. Nair, mentioning that he visited the village where the royal leather was manufactured. Diane is a fountain in Lectoure – the historic town located seven hours south of Paris. All Joseph Duclos collections are named as a tribute to the historic legacy of the house of Joseph Duclos – a leather manufactory – which was now turning into a leather goods brand.
With four collections in hand, new collections don’t seem to be in his agenda, at least not now. He chose the moment to expand on his philosophy for slow fashion. “You don’t need a new collection every time. If every house has two or three bags that seem to be there forever, why are we filling up the trash can with crap every time? You can tweak and make things better, but you don’t need more collections. You refine things.”
“It’s like the McDonaldization of fashion. You put in a logo and it sells. Good for you.”
The discussion moved on to the ill-effects of fast fashion. And by fast fashion, we just didn’t mean brands that have huge collections at cheap prices, but also the established fashion calendar of seasons. “These fast collections are killers of industries,” said Mr. Nair with a tinge of anger and sadness. “When I came to Paris in early days of couture, there were these bunch of couture textile shops. Some of the materials they made were amazingly beautiful. They were in Lyon and Como. But with the new way of functioning, these places have shut down. You don’t have the time to create beautiful new fabrics because the timelines have become so short. In fact, a lot of bag companies in France have shut down. I have been trying to get a button made for quite a while now – like coins. There were people in France who used to do that. Not anymore.”
The designer doesn’t mince his words: “It’s like the McDonaldization of fashion. You put in a logo and it sells. Good for you.”
Paris, his home
Even though he fondly remembers India, Paris is truly home for Mr. Nair. He chose the city for its “tremendous character”, which also serves as inspiration for him. “I always say that when you are walking in Paris, don’t look at the street. Look up. The way the light sways between buildings is fascinating. Then there are carvings in the buildings. Inspiration is everywhere.”
His love for the city is prompting him to almost start a project on saving it. “I was in a taxi one day, passing through Avenue Montaigne, and we were at the red light. One of the old buildings in Paris was getting demolished right there. A small metal ball hitting the wall. I heard the taxi driver – an oldish gentleman – sigh in front. I said, it hurts you. He said, yes, it does. He talked about how his forefathers were a part of making these buildings. They took years to learn the techniques, learn the sculpting. But you can break it down in a second and put up a glass wall. That’s inspiration right there. Why are we making Paris ugly?”
Taking a moment, he mentions witnessing a similar phenomenon happening in India. “We have not learnt how to hold heritage, and that’s a huge problem. So you desperately cling on to whatever you can get your hands on.”
India & the world
There are not many Indians who have reached at the top of global luxury. If there can be a Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and Ajay Banga, why can’t there be someone in luxury? Recovering his youthful mirth, Mr. Nair asked me if I knew Leena Nair – referring to the CEO of Chanel. When I said I do, he laughed and said, “People ask me if we are cousins!” Well, they are not, to set the record straight.

To my question, however, he prefers to take a non-regional stand. “I think everyone is talented. It’s not even to do with hard working. At the end, it boils down to perseverance, understanding where you stand, and not overestimating yourself. And then, definitely, a lot to do with luck.” Promoting ‘Brand India’ is certainly something he believes in though.
Ramesh Nair, the person
Water is the most important luxury for him.
Mr. Nair’s personal style is very Steve Job-esque. He’s never seen without a beanie hat, and is pretty much always wearing a black t-shirt with an open shirt on top. There’s a bead bracelet, supplemented by a watch. It looked like a fantastic watch, and I was too shy to ask him to show it me. I didn’t want to be intrusive. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I asked which watch it was, the next day, over email. I got the response “5235G Regulator”. Now, I expected a more detailed response – like how about the brand name? Wanting to not give up, I, like most journalists today, googled. It turned out to be a Patek Philippe. If his style already hadn’t implied, this single incident told me that Mr. Nair doesn’t like to draw attention to himself.
His modesty shines through. As a child, he wanted to become a train driver. Thankfully, he’s far away from that ambition. When I asked what advice would he give to his 18-year-old self, he said, “Don’t be so dumb.” And then he guffawed, trying to remember what he was like at 18 in fact. “I think I was eating mud or something. I don’t know what I was doing at 18! I have serious blanks in my life. I feel like I was born and then immediately I was 20. I feel like Ashok Kumar – like the perpetual old man.” Ashok Kumar was one of the first superstars of Indian cinema, and for people our age who know him, have always seen him portray an old person.
Listening to music – any kind of music – decompresses him. From Taylor Swift to Dua Lipa to classical. Water is the most important luxury for him. He finishes his day by drinking water – although it was listening to music till the “neighbors got antsy. Music at 3 a.m.? No way! Parisian apartments…,” he says and shrugs. Showers are incredibly important for him. “I’ll die if I can’t have my shower. Wherever, whichever part of the world I go, I have to know if I’ll be able to have a shower,” he says emphatically. Not having a decent shower was one of his hiccups that discouraged him from joining the army. It also made him cancel his trip to Faroe Islands three times, knowing that the cabins there might not offer great shower facilities.
“There is nothing tedious about my workday. Design is not tedious.”
A shower also gets his creativity flowing. “I keep a notepad just outside to make sure I note down everything!” Aah…the notepads…which are apparently strewn everywhere to make sure he notes down his thoughts. It drives his wife Rachna crazy, finding them everywhere. Even his phone has huge amount of notes. Some of his thoughts get picked up and explored, others die a death in the oblivion of time.
He misses his cat, Kali, who passed away in 2021. When I asked if he’s going to get another pet, he said, “We never get pets. They just land up at our door. They just come and say ‘hello’! We actually stole Kali. She was someone else’s, she came to our doorstep, so we just stole her.” There were multiple times during the course of this interview when I wasn’t sure if Mr. Nair was joking or was damn serious. This was one of them.
Life is something with a beginning and an end for him. And he is most afraid of losing his mind. It truly worries him.
“What is love?” I asked him. “Baby don’t hurt me,” he said, quoting the hit Haddaway single from 1993, and guffawed again.
In a world where we put fashion designers on a pedestal, making them celebrities, Mr. Nair is wonderfully balanced and delightfully human. He extraordinariness lies in his work beyond anything else. That is where he would draw attention. “There is nothing tedious about my workday. Design is not tedious,” he said at one moment during the interview.
His life is a Bollywood material drama. He just chooses not to dramatize it. There are no doctored responses. There is no exaggeration. His humour is infectious. His keen, observant eyes are as genial as mischievous. He says things as is. He is, simply, himself.