A gilded dreamscape

Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla’s four decades lead to a monumental new flagship in Mumbai built by their own design and art gallery A Wonder Room

14 Aug 2026

Pratishtha Rana

In 1986, serendipity led Sandeep Khosla, then visiting Mumbai, to meet Abu Jani. In 2003, it was the sheer regalia and a tailored pageantry of India’s palatial zest witnessed in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas that won them the National Award for Best Costume Design. But what’s common between the two timelines is how the duo’s namesake label Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla, has since stitched a constellation of couture, soused in embroideries, crafts and the conscious retelling of techniques like Chikankari and Bandhani.

Celebrating 40 years, the fashion veterans along with their art and design gallery A Wonder Room collect all the archives, memorabilia and novel collections inside Mubarak Baug, their new flagship in South Mumbai’s historic Framjee Cawasjee Institute that traces a colossal scale, multiple floors and 20,000 sq ft mapping their creations. Mubarak Baug is all at once their past and present. “I lived in a house called Mubarak Manzil. During the Partition, my grandparents moved back from Pakistan and got a house in Kapurthala, called Mubarak Manzil. So we said, what better than to name this place Mubarak, it being the most beautiful word of welcome and creating a world of fantasy.”

While the ground floor is studded with an ivory Shola tree in full bloom and wall murals by artist Shine Shivan that depict stories of lord Krishna and his friend Sudama, Mughal emperor Akbar and Moinuddin Chishti, among other tales, there is one vantage point, up in the balcony on the first floor, from where the label’s golden-hued decadence seems to drip endlessly. Mythological swans float high up with the ceiling, countless embroidered frames dot the sightline, a fully-clad gilded promenade seals the Bombay skyline, and a large wall is feathered with shimmering fragments left of their past garments with Wolf Jaipur.

But what grounds the space are the twinkling, brassy screens on the first floor by Shilo Shiv Suleman. These panels become noticeable moments of hide and seek with rows of garments speckled all around in a meticulous arrangement.

However, there is one theatre that rises up to the sight beyond it all, a museum of their oldest couture pieces, where the architecture is informed by the geometry of Indian stepwells. Sandeep, during our conversation, declares, “So we and A Wonder Room, like a challenge of creating a maximalist space, where people come and wonder, how are there so many things present and how are they put so well together?”

Read more: Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla break down the art of crafting a big, fat Indian wedding