Raw Mango’s Sanjay Garg on how art deco motifs reflect in the brand’s textile lexicon

For Raw Mango loyalists, the allure lies as much in the sublime brocades as in the cultivated eye of its founder, Sanjay Garg—an antiquarian attuned to the poetry of form. Raised in Rajasthan, it’s little surprise that art deco echoes through his work. “I grew up surrounded by art deco,” Garg says, recalling the pastel contours of Jaipur’s Raj Mandir cinema, designed by WM Namjoshi.

The Cheli Odhani, patterned with rhythmic ovals, drapes over an antique sculpture at Raw Mango’s Colaba store. Creative direction by Kanupriya Tandon of Raw Mango.

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But it was not love at first sight. “It started with questioning. If I didn’t like art deco, why? What about it unsettled me?” The enquiry, as such things do, snowballed. “If it was such a significant design movement in India, what could it offer to Indian textiles?” Garg recalls thinking to himself.

That curiosity followed him across the country, revealing how deeply deco had seeped into local traditions—from the terraced homes of Chettinad to the havelis of Shekhawati. “Without even realising it, generations of builders had embraced deco so fully, it became the default language of its time,” he observes. His long-standing love for symmetry found new resonance in deco’s rhythmic geometry.

Gold zari threads form a sharp geometric border in the Laszlo sari.

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