Think back to what you wore to school. Crisp shirts, starched pinafores, bright white socks, and of course, a pair of smart, shiny black Mary Jane shoes. The shoe carries unmistakable girlhood nostalgia, and over the last few years, has made a noticeable return to everyone’s closets; in a spectrum of colours, bolder prints and with shinier buckles.
A limited-edition merchandise collaboration between Johnnie Walker Blonde Non-Alcoholic Lemonade and New Delhi-based designer Dhruv Kapoor now has Mary Janes take the spotlight, with the vision of celebrating individual style and self-expression.
“For me, working on the collaboration was about freedom of expression and progress. That is how we work on design as a brand as well,” says Dhruv, of their shared beliefs.
This time around, the Mary Janes are not just for the girls. Made of handcrafted leather in blue with a pop of yellow on the insoles, the hybrid shoes are a reflection of Dhruv’s design language, which champions modern dressing, androgynous silhouettes and gender-fluid dressing.
“Mary Janes were traditionally associated or rigid towards being a feminine shoe. And that’s a memory or a familiarity that we all remember from school because I remember every girl in class had Mary Janes which was a part of the uniform. I wanted to pick up something that has that rigid association and reperceive it,” Dhruv says. “We picked up the women’s uniform shoe, and the men’s shoe or what I wore; a traditional Oxford or a brogue, and the collaborative result was this,” he adds.
The shoes come in an electric blue padded backpack, which comes with colourful detachable charms and enamel pins. “ I did not want somebody to just get the shoes and discard the packaging, so we thought about how we can add more value to the packaging and promote prolonged use. We wanted to make this cooler, younger and a little more ‘everyday’, and the charms and pins are something the users can choose from the mix we are offering, or even use some of their own to personalise the bag,” Dhruv says.
The shoes come packaged inside a padded backpack
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
Over the years, Dhruv’s eponymous brand with its contemporary design language that has trailed its focus on gender-fluid designs has been worn by a bevy of celebrities including Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh, Sonam Kapoor, Karan Johar and more. Sonam was recently spotted in a customised white jacket and skirt co-ord set from the designer, making waves for her maternity fashion. “A full circle moment.,” Dhruv says, given how Sonam took the brand into the spotlight over a decade ago by wearing one of his creations.
2025 had been a momentous year for the designer, with the launch of Kapoor 2.0, a new youth-driven expressive reimagining of everyday essentials which went live on the brand’s e-commerce platform. Now a regular at Milan Fashion Week, Dhruv also presented his Spring/Summer 2026 Co-ed runway show, Foundations & Futures and 2026 began with the designer opening his first flagship store in New Delhi. Conceiving this space and seeing it come to life is something that has the designer excited, as he describes working on it at length.
“For me it was more about expanding the experience of the brand. We have not had a direct presence or an experience that is directly curated and controlled by the brand before this. The flagship store for me was to share the values of the brand. Now, these are not really tangible but my team and I sat down with the architects to make this come through,” Dhruv says.
Dhruv Kapoor
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
The space, he says, is one that is meant to make you pause. “The brand always shifts at a point of union between two polar concepts, whether it’s restraint and expression, or softness and structure. So the space ideally borrows from these elements, and that’s how it’s built,” he says. There are rough, raw marble accents or monoliths fused with a seamless floor to ceiling micro concrete and Dhruv’s obsession with energy flow; all of which comes together in the space. A monolith in the centre holds affirmations which keep changing, a gentle reminder for the customers and perusers who make their way around the store at their own pace.
“You are free to pause and to go at your own pace and connect with the brand in whichever format you like. It is about easing out, and making the whole experience a calm one. We wanted this to be more powerful than simply buying and selling,” Dhruv says. The curation at the store, the designer says, is of a much wider range with many different kinds of textiles and menswear, which customers in the past only had access to through his online store.
New collection
At the end of the month, Dhruv reveals that a new collection is on its way. “I started thinking about it when I was coming back from Milan after my show. I was waiting to board the flight and was observing the people around; how they respond when you put them in a space of transit or a minimal space, how the body language changes and the existence of a common shared language amongst everybody which is just with expressions,” he says, of what set off the spark.
“Somebody is running to catch their flight, someone with a lot of time is at ease, and another person is surrounded by chaos because their kids are with them. These are some characters we have infused into the collection, in a more refined way so that it looks cohesive,” Dhruv adds.
We circle back to Mary Janes; who does Dhruv see wearing these new shoes? “Just off my head, Saif Ali Khan. The shoes are comfortable and laidback, something you can spend your day in. Alia Bhatt is going to love it as well. When we were building it, it was never gendered or even specifically for someone; we never put the audience into a box,” Dhruv says.
“If you know the person is playful enough to experiment or is wanting to express themselves a certain way free of rigidity, they are definitely going to pounce at something like this,” he adds.
The shoes are priced at ₹22,500 and are available on dhruvkapoor.com
Published – February 18, 2026 03:23 pm IST
