Talk about main character energy.

On July 8, when Manish Malhotra makes his debut on the official Paris couture calendar, he is not just adding another city to a tour of global spotlights that most recently included his second time at the Met Gala in New York City.

For the Mumbai-based designer, whose work has become synonymous with Bollywood glamour, this first Paris show is the culmination of a journey from costumes to couture.

Plus, “I always feel it’s not just about launching a collection or about the business, although that is important,” he said in an exclusive interview. “For me, it’s also about meeting new people, new tastes, new requirements…new situations. Everything is so new and it pushes you to think anew and adapt.”

Adaptation has long been the byword of Malhotra’s approach, long before he established his namesake label some 20 years ago.

Growing up, Malhotra was a movie-obsessed kid with a particular fascination for the way clothing and sets contributed to the narrative. That eventually led him to film sets and a first big break in 1990 when he created costumes for Juhi Chawla, one of India’s leading actresses.

For the next decade, he “went from a movie to another, to the next, from one actor to another,” he recalled. Through he joined forces with a boutique in Mumbai and staged his first fashion show in 1999, it would be another six years before the Manish Malhotra brand was born.

Meanwhile, his filmography continued to grow, now a roster that spans from Kajol and Shah Rukh Khan to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Deepika Padukone.

These days, his designs have stepped out far beyond the silver screen, with global boldface names like Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian, Naomi Campbell and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, for whom he designed striking Western-inflected silhouettes during her Cowboy Carter tour in 2025.

And he has no shortage of clients, famous and not.

Although the brand does not disclose its turnover, following the 2021 acquisition of a 40 percent stake by Indian retail giant Reliance Brands Limited, Malhotra said the company had grown 33 percent year-over-year for the last three years. His atelier has some 700 craftspeople and the company’s headcount is at 1,000 employees to date.

Its retail footprint has grown to six doors, including three stores in Mumbai, a 15,000-square-foot address in Delhi, a similarly sized one in Hyderabad and one at Dubai Mall, which marked the brand’s first step outside of its homeland in 2023.

He is putting the final touches on a fourth store in Mumbai, located near The Taj Mahal Palace hotel and the city’s grand Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya museum.

For all that, 59-year-old Malhotra is not resting on any laurels, whether in his role as chairman of the company in which he retains a 60 percent stake or its “head designer,” as he put it.

“Every year is a challenge, because you’re looking to make your work younger, newer and do something different,” he said. In his case, that translated as new segments, which now span jewelry, luxury ready-to-wear and accessories.

“You start wanting to become a house, and when you want to become a house, you have high jewelry and fine jewelry, and lots of business verticals,” he continued. “We want to go to perfumery, we want to go into home — all the things that I personally love.”

Keen to avoid being pigeonholed, Malhotra “looks at every vertical as a separate business.”

“Some things could blend, some things couldn’t, some things won’t, because that vertical has its own journey,” he continued. “I didn’t want my jewelry to be only looking good on my clothes [but also] on a black dress…in an Arabic wedding…in a [Western] wedding, so it’s universal.”

Though he is “an Indian designer who made his name in Indian clothes,” he also made his name in the film industry with Western styling.

“I think jewelry was that way to slightly step into a global world,” he added. “Jennifer Lopez wore our Russian emerald necklace over a white and black gown by an international designer, and that’s exactly what I wanted — it’s not just to be worn on a sari or a wedding lehenga.”

Since the deal with Reliance, Malhotra described the business as more structured, more strategic as well as more ambitious. Seeing his company in this new era is what “assured [him] to go global,” he added. “That’s also one of the big reasons that in the last three years I thought it is time for us to move.”

Dubai was his first move, “a calculated risk” in a territory familiar to him, rife with clients and personal friends. But the comfort zone isn’t the thing for this dynamic conversationalist who likes to start his day between 5 and 5:30 a.m.

Looking at the next five or six years, he “definitely wants to be between India and another country,” he said. “That could turn out to be America, that could turn out to be Paris. Right now, those are the two places in my mind.”

So he can’t flub his Paris debut.

Malhotra is acutely aware that he must do more to meet the moment than transpose what he’s shown at Delhi Couture Week or Dubai Fashion Week onto the Paris runway.

“You just cannot be culturally inappropriate or be like ‘this is me whether you like it or not.’ Wherever you are, you need to adapt, you need to get that culture, and somehow blend it with yours, your thought process, your culture, your artisticness, your collections,” he said. “That’s the challenge and that’s also the excitement, right?”

But with over three decades under his belt, he’s confident.

“It’s been a journey and I think that is why I don’t even fear taking a chance or a risk, because it’s come from an absolutely non-planned, yet slightly strategic [place] of always pushing yourself, pushing the boundary,” he said. “I’m fearless that way and also if I’m convinced about something, I’ll go for it without having any kind of second thoughts on it.”