A & I
Our world
One person answers for everything.
A&I is founded and run by Artee Makhija. There is no committee here — every run is signed off by her, and when a piece is not ready it waits.
Founder · design, craft and the calendar
Artee Makhija
Nine years spent at the centre of founders' offices across furniture, automobiles, retail, workspaces and software — the work of turning intention into something that actually ships.
Twice a co-founder before A&I, most recently of a womenswear venture. A&I is what she wanted to exist: design-led clothing that can explain itself completely — the idea, the cloth and the hands.
She decides which technique a season is built around, how large a run can honestly be, and whether a piece survives an ordinary Tuesday.
- Based in
- Ahmedabad, Gujarat
- Years of practice
- Nine, across eight organisations
- Ventures founded
- Two before A&I
- Languages
- English, Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, Urdu
The rooms behind the label.
A&I is a first collection, not a first job. Four areas of practice carry into how it is run.
Founder's office
Nine years at the centre of founders' offices — sequencing priorities, writing the SOPs and running the reviews that keep a business honest with itself.
Brand & content
More than twenty client shoots directed end to end, from brief to final cut, holding one standard across every image and caption.
Revenue & procurement
Built a B2B sales function from zero to ₹82 Cr annual turnover with a team of twenty, and governed a ₹10 Cr+ procurement programme on the buying side.
A technical start
A Bachelor's in Computer Science and an Android developer's first year — the habit of building systems never left.
How the work moves
Four moves, in this order.
- 01 — Get the real picture
- Before anything is designed, know what the cloth can do, what the atelier can hold and which numbers are trustworthy.
- 02 — Sequence the priorities
- Not every piece can be urgent. The season is sequenced and written down, so the whole studio argues with the same list.
- 03 — Build the cadence
- Reviews, trackers and standards that a small team keeps running without being chased. Good operations should be quietly invisible.
- 04 — Close the loop
- Decisions documented, follow-through verified, learnings folded back in — so nothing has to be re-decided next season.
How a piece gets approved.
Three gates, in this order. A piece that fails any one of them goes back to the table rather than onto the site.
The idea holds
It has a reason to exist beside everything else on the rail. If it repeats a piece we have, one of the two goes.
The cloth behaves
Sampled, washed and worn before the run is sized. If the cloth fights the cut, the cut changes — not the cloth.
The atelier agrees
The makers cost the hours honestly. If it cannot be made well in the time, the launch moves.
The one rule she will not break.
No atelier is asked to work faster than the craft allows. Everything else — the season, the launch date, the size of the run — bends around that.