MARGN
CLOTHING AS STRUCTURE
MARGN
Rooted in Himalayas, MARGN is an India-based menswear brand founded by designer Saurabh Maurya and Ranjit, with a focus on craft, functionality and symbolism. Its practice spans clothing, objects and installations, exploring what makes us human through ideas of protection, preservation, shelter and care. Drawing from Maurya’s rural upbringing, disparate memories and materials are translated into compelling personal narratives.
At its core, MARGN studies and interprets human systems, the instinctive ways in which people across the world package, build, shield and safeguard themselves, their loved ones and what they value. By channelling both a cerebral and emotional understanding of these systems, the brand underscores that despite geographical, political or cultural divides, our ways of being are more similar than they are different.
THE FIFTH GESTURE
The Fifth Gesture is a collaborative installation that reflects on the many forms of prayer and faith, gestures that belong to the human condition and quietly bind us to one another. Developed with the women of the self-help group Jomche in Darcha, the work is rooted in the Himalayan context, where landscape, craft and daily rituals deeply shape the way protection, presence and resilience are understood.
Created by MARGN, the installation traces a year-long journey into the region of Darcha on the upper end of Himalayas, one defined by listening, learning and building work grounded in the truths of the land.
Throughout their time in Darcha, the designer built long-term relationships with the community and began to see nature through the artisans’ eyes: as a form of prayer, one that offers sustenance, teaches rhythm and carries an innate sense of protection. The belief that “prayer is protection, and nature is the first protector” became the foundation of the work.
What emerged through lived experience is that prayer in the Himalayas extends far beyond ritual. It lives in gestures, chants, stones placed along the path and in the simple act of moving through the mountains. This unspoken dialogue with nature forms the emotional core of the project.
At the centre of the installation are the most technically challenging hand-knitted pieces co-developed with the community, accompanied by two looks that articulate what prayer means in form and gesture. A hand-knitted vest constructed of 14,982 hand-dyed buttons becomes a symbol of patience and devotion, while a panelled knit wall invites viewers to bow, to pause and step into Nirvair Singh Rai’s documentary capturing the journey across the Himalayas.
The Fifth Gesture stands as an offering: a tribute to the hands that guided the work, the mountains that shaped it, and the quiet prayers that carried it into being.
