Bangalore, Sep 24: Raw Mango, the Indian design house founded by textile designer Sanjay Garg, presents Bhitti Chitra | भित्ति चित्र, its Festive 2026 collection, drawing upon the visual languages of ancient Rome and the Indian subcontinent to explore the fresco as a living archive of stories, rituals, mythologies and then worlds that existed around them.
Set against the historic walls of Garh Palace, Bundi, Bhitti Chitra looks to the frescoes of Pompeii, the murals of Rajasthan and the narrative traditions of Ajanta, bringing these diverse visual histories into conversation through Raw Mango’s contemporary textile language. Here, the wall becomes a canvas for memory, and clothing becomes another surface on which history can be retold.
The collection considers the classical not as something fixed in the past, but as an idea that continues to evolve. Architectural fragments, celestial figures, courtiers, flora and fauna, mythical creatures and ornamental forms move across textiles, appearing at once familiar and otherworldly. Griffins, mermaids, angels and swans inhabit the collection alongside figures drawn from the murals of Rajasthan. A load-bearing angel, traditionally carved or painted as part of architectural structures, is reimagined holding a sari, architecture becoming adornment, and adornment
becoming architecture. The language of the fresco is translated into cloth through Varanasi brocades, silk, velvet, wool and canvas. Woven motifs, brocades, zardozi and thread embroidery carry fragments of the collection’s visual world, allowing images once preserved on walls to find another life in textile.
Colour follows the character of the ancient pigment. Rich tones are softened and weathered, bottle green becomes light jade; vibrant reds settle into dusty earth; chrome yellow, mural green, black and midnight blue sit alongside shades reminiscent of mineral pigments and aged surfaces. The palette carries the quietness of something discovered rather than newly made.
At the heart of Bhitti Chitra is an interest in the movement of ideas. Ancient frescoes across cultures were not simply decorative; they recorded the imagination of their time, its people, beliefs, landscapes and aspirations. The collection considers these visual records as points of connection, looking at the ways images and influences have travelled across geographies and generations.
Sanjay Garg, founder and designer of Raw Mango, says, “The process from inspiration to the final product is always a collaborative effort at Raw Mango. We are working with designers, weavers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, each of whom brings their own ideas and perspectives to the collection. All of us are looking at the same inspiration, and the final product is a fusion of several different ways of interpreting that inspiration.”
The campaign unfolds within Garh Palace, Bundi, where faded murals, weathered surfaces and architectural details become part of the collection’s visual vocabulary. Photographed by Bikramjit Bose, the images move between portraiture, architecture and still life, allowing the clothes to exist within the atmosphere from which their ideas emerged.
Bhitti Chitra extends beyond the visual. Its accompanying film and soundscape draw from the language of archival imagery and Indian documentary cinema, furthering Raw Mango’s continuing engagement with the ways history is documented, remembered and reimagined.
With Bhitti Chitra, Raw Mango returns to the classical age not in pursuit of nostalgia, but to consider what remains when time has passed: the image on a wall, the story carried through generations, the craft preserved in cloth, and the possibility of giving it another life.
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