India, June 15 -- Ayushman "Bobo" Mitra has never been particularly interested in fitting neatly into a category. Artist, designer, storyteller, cultural provocateur: his work has always occupied the fertile space between disciplines as he has built Bobo Calcutta, one of Indian fashion's most distinctive voices.

What makes Bobo Calcutta unusual is that the clothes arrive late in the process. Before there is a jacket or a dress, there is often a painting. Before there is a collection, there is a feeling. Flowers, faces, fragments of memory, cinema, desire, chaos and colour populate Mitra's world. The garments merely happen to be where they land.

That language was formed long before the label existed. In Kolkata, afternoons spent in his g...