Anjali Singh, the founder of Aksstagga, is on a mission to change this reality, one collection at a time. After over 20 years in the field of fashion, once she started her own line of design, she was determined to make it her specialty to tell stories through garments. It started with Somanjali, an ode to her late husband and co-founder of Aksstagga, Somil Singh, where she told the story of their loving marriage spanning decades till death did they part. With her new collection, Reckless Youth, she brings in a fresh perspective on reckless, passionate love that defined the '90s.
Reckless Youth is a collection built on a life lived in the era before technology and dating apps: a time when falling in love was not easy, and staying in love required even more strength and an amount of patience almost unthinkable in today's time. It was a time when for one date you had to wait for days, and even then you had to sneak out to meet your lover. A time with no way of constantly staying in touch, when all you had were memories of fleeting moments spent together and days filled with longing to get back to the arms of your lover. Perhaps this is what gave love the intensity it had in that age.
Anjali's design of the collection centers around her own love story with Somil, a relationship that began in the '90s and unfolded over seven years of courtship before turning into marriage. It was a time when it took an unbelievable amount of courage to be in love and make the decision to spend a lifetime together. Through Reckless Youth, Anjali revisits her own past, and in doing so, invites others to recall what love once felt like.
"I don't design to follow trends," she says, almost matter-of-factly. "I create from what I have lived. That is where the truth is."
In one of the most striking narratives from the collection, Anjali tells the story of a day when a goodbye turned into something else entirely. Somil and Anjali's families were not happy with their love and were starkly opposed to the idea of an inter-caste marriage. Somil was supposed to leave the city and Anjali forever. Bags packed, parents waiting. Anjali stood at a bookstore, holding herself together, telling herself over and over that she would not cry. But when the train began to move, that promise broke, and tears poured in like a river. And then, just when it felt like she had lost him, he returned, breathless, smiling, and kneeling on one knee, choosing her over everything else. A fairytale ending and a happy beginning that lasted an eternity.
This moment, tender and electric, finds its way into Anjali's collection. The design gives the sense of pause and rush at once, like something slipping away and being held onto at the same time.
As she talks about her own passionate love story, Anjali says with a sigh that it is this effort, patience, and longing that feel almost unfamiliar today. Relationships now are defined more by labels than by emotions. Situationships. Benching. Orbiting, every label in the book except for the one that makes two people decide to commit wholeheartedly, to go all in. Meeting your lover is easy today, communication is immediate and constant. And yet, uncertainty in relationships is at its peak.
As she talks about her own passionate love story, Anjali says with a sigh that it is this effort, patience, and longing that feel almost unfamiliar today. Relationships now are defined more by labels than by emotions. Situationships. Benching. Orbiting, every label in the book except for the one that makes two people decide to commit wholeheartedly, to go all in. Meeting your lover is easy today, communication is immediate and constant. And yet, uncertainty in relationships is at its peak.
"Today everything is open," Anjali says. "People tell you they are going on a date. They go on holidays together. But that effort, that madness... that is missing."
Reckless Youth asks a deep question: what did we lose when love became so easy?
"When you fall in love, you do stupid things," she says, smiling at her memories. "That is reckless youth. And that is what I wanted to capture."
Yet today, with all the freedom, the youth are most afraid of showing the courage to do silly things.
That is perhaps what makes Reckless Youth so compelling. At its core, it is about remembering what it felt like to care deeply about something. To choose someone again and again, even when it wasn't easy. This one certainty won over all the other forms of uncertainty of communication, troubles with family, and everything else.
That is perhaps what makes Reckless Youth so compelling. At its core, it is about remembering what it felt like to care deeply about something. To choose someone again and again, even when it wasn't easy. This one certainty won over all the other forms of uncertainty of communication, troubles with family, and everything else.
Every design of Aksstagga is rooted in one idea: stories come first. A garment is not just about how it looks but also about what memories it carries. Together, they form something larger than fashion; they represent a narrative that you will not wear just once, but you will get back to it again and again, clothes that you will pass on to your next generations.
In an age when fashion moves faster than memory can be formed, Aksstagga chooses to slow down, to hold onto moments, and to give them form. It reminds us that some stories are meant to be carried on forever.
