Storyteller is two people in Kolkata: Arup Bag and Sangita Patra.

The clothes came first. In 2017 we set up our own factory — a big one, and we knew nothing about textile going in. The job work was for international labels, but never directly; we worked under an export-quality manufacturer, to their standard, our name on nothing. What we got instead was the floor. How ink sits on cotton. Why a print cracks at the sixth wash. Which fabric holds its shape and which one lies to you. Around Covid we moved up to cut-and-sew, taking a garment from the roll to the finished piece.

Somewhere in there, having our own label stopped being a someday thing.

Before any of it, from 2011, I was working away from home — and it moved me around the country for years. Different states, different languages, food I couldn’t name, festivals I’d never heard of, people who had nothing in common with me except that we were both a long way from home. You notice one thing doing that: everybody has something they are trying to say, and most of them never get a decent way to say it.

That’s the whole brand. Clothes as a way of saying it.

We started with Kolkata because it’s ours, and because we know it well enough to get it right — the tram, the fish market, the adda that somehow runs four hours on one cup of tea. The Bangla and Benglish on the tees isn’t a design decision. It’s how people here actually talk. Put the same line in English and it dies.

Kolkata is where we started. India is where this goes. Every state I passed through has a line waiting to be printed.

Sangita is the proprietor of Arjun Apparels, and she runs the half nobody posts about — the orders, the accounts, the merchandising, the thousand small things that decide whether a brand survives its first year. She studied graphic design and merchandising alongside the work, so what ends up on the shirt and what happens after you order both go through her.

What you’re buying: 100% cotton, bio-washed and pre-shrunk. Water-based, PVC-free ink. Designed in Kolkata, made in India. Oversized Classic is 240 GSM — the other fits are listed on each product page.

Nine years making clothes for other people. This one is ours.

Wear Your Story.

— Arup & Sangita, Kolkata