The Story-First Couture Brand of Aksstagga and how Anjali Singh Goel managed to establish it

Anjali Singh Goel, founder and creative director of Couture fashion house Aksstagga, which has gained a reputation as a fast-paced, show-driven, season-focused industry, decided to take a completely different route. His art is created with emotion, lived experience, and pure talent. Its motto is also very clear: It aims to create clothes not just as clothes, but as fashion that will make people happy and give them meaning.

Aksstagga by Anjali Singh Goel is not just a brand, but a very intimate language of couture: a brand that puts emotion before spectacle, meaning before momentum. It is a brand to be considered rather than treated as a fast moving product.

Anjali Singh started designing more than two decades ago, when she graduated with an MBA in 1999. She was the first woman to step into the fashion industry professionally at a time when female-owned creative companies were almost never seen (let alone applauded). His early designs focused on unstitched fabrics such as saris, suit lengths and exquisite fabrics; designer Chikankari viscerally experimented with Banarasi weaves, sequins and regional synths. Although we think they are well known now, even these combinations were radical at the time.

News about Anjali’s work spreads quickly. He founded retail chains and built a large personal customer base of bureaucrats, business families and high-profile circles. His designs attracted great attention among those influential in tasting circles, and much of his work was being sold before it was even completed.

This was no accidental success because Anjali also instinctively knew materials, proportions, design and what women really wanted to wear.

When Anjali launched Aksstagga in 2020, she didn’t enter the fashion world to start another brand. Rather, he desired to provide an environment in which design could serve the purpose of being a mirror of the wearer’s personality, contributing to the wearer rather than making him a part of it. The brand was not a revival of fashion but its evolution based on Anjali’s interpretation.

Unlike trend-oriented brands, Aksstagga does not believe in mass production and the pursuit of mass appeal. Collections are high quality, theme-driven and story-driven. The prints are unique and made as part of a larger story. Silhouettes are fluid, malleable and receptive to the person.

Anjali points out that people don’t visit a designer to imitate what they see. “They come to feel seen.”

The brightest manifestation of this ideology is in her post-relaunch series Somanjali, where she honors her late husband Somil Singh, as each of the designs are based on their love story and life together.

Somajali says Somil and me are reduced to one; His story with us may be incomplete, but our love is complete.

This philosophy also helps the brand function in its daily operations. Aksstagga has a model of slow luxury, bespoke, direct consultations, and modification based on preference and/or personality, pioneered in many cases by Anjali herself. Corset blouse can be re-evaluated for comfort. A lehenga print can be transformed into a western shrug. A design can have the lives of many people as each one is unique to the wearer.

However, arguably the biggest contribution of Anjali Singh’s work is outside the catwalk. Her relationship with the artisans, especially women working in Chikankari in and around Lucknow, is a personal experience spanning decades. Anjali, who herself once managed systems for home-based artisans, is particularly sensitive to the limitations many workers face: limited mobility, low pay, and unrecognized labor.

He observes that Chikankari is a globally appreciated garment but the workers who produce it work in a very poor environment.

The production model is a direct response to this imbalance. Aksstagga, Anjali Singh Goel. Decentralization is practiced in the workplace; In this way, tradesmen are enabled to work in their own region. Timelines are flexible. Fair payment is given priority. Anjali not only offers the highest rates in the segment, but also provides working from home opportunities to widows and single women.

Anjali’s vision is even bigger. It is exploring government collaborations through programs such as ODOP to provide training centers where young women can learn traditional crafts in safer and dignified environments, providing them with skills training, insurance and independence.

The understanding of the design reflects the same sensitivity behind the scenes of Anjali Singh Goel’s work Aksstagga. Dynamism is not tightly controlled and creativity can be allowed to develop freely. Designers are young and encouraged to experiment, challenge and work on spaces guided by comfort and openness rather than hierarchy.

Anjali says creativity should be free. The source of a good idea is never known. “It can’t be forced.”

Aksstagga is expanding today and creating an audience that is not focused on superficiality. It’s growing organically, but Anjali is very careful not to rush things that have been patiently created. Anjali has carved a unique niche in Indian fashion in choosing meaning over momentum, a place where craft is appreciated, people are valued and fashion leaves a lasting mark in terms of creating a remembered meaning.