Sachin & Babi Comes to Texas

In September, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Sachin & Babi‘s Babi Ahluwalia (Founder & CEO) and Amy Riordon (CFO), to discuss their backgrounds in fashion, their inspirations, and why the Texas woman is the perfect client. Before I returned home to publish Fort Worth Key Magazine, I lived in New York City for ten years, a big chunk of that time working in high fashion. It was a joyful moment to connect with New York women in fashion, and, of course, advocate for Dallas/Fort Worth for Sachin & Babi’s next brick and mortar store.

Both Ahluwalia and Riordon were the picture of grace, eager to learn all about my background before the official interview began. Look, historically, the fashion industry is a bit of a blood bath. The Devil Wears Prada is not farce. So, when you encounter people in the field, especially those who are high up, who are genuinely engaged and kind, it’s refreshing. Our meeting reminded me of why I loved high fashion in the first place: a passion for craft and the thrill of dressing. For those in the game long term, a career in high fashion is both compulsory and exhausting. While you may choose it in the beginning, after a while, fashion chooses you. It’s a gift, and a delight, and it radiates off of Ahluwalia and Riordon. By the end of our meeting, Ahluwalia and I made the connection she’d just had lunch with the woman I interned for at Oscar de la Renta, when he was still with us, when I’d first arrived in New York many, many moons ago. Even 1,500 miles away, fashion beckons.

While the following conversation gets a little inside baseball, it’s a fascinating look into the cogs of the fashion business. With tech expediting every facet of the industry, it’s imperative for labels to take a closer look at e-comm data to best serve their client and maximize their bottom line. Perhaps most pertinent is that, although the latter process sounds sterile and impersonal, building quality consumer relationships have become more valuable than ever. When it comes to finding sincere consumer connections, I believe Ahluwalia and Riordon have landed in the right place down in Texas. Now, if only I could get them to commit to Fort Worth…

---

Babi Ahluwalia: I’m a New Delhi girl. At 21/22 [I went] to FIT to study textile design and development, and met Sachin [Ahluwalia], my husband. We were friendly in the fall of ‘94, and then we started our life together. He was a design major; I was a textile major. He’s a Mumbai kid, so we met ‘cause we look like each other. We had a nice camaraderie, kids discovering New York. Then, we realized we’re kind of cut from a similar fabric, because we both have entrepreneurial mums. His mum was a womenswear designer, my mum was a kidswear designer.

Bailey Powell Aldrich: Fashion’s in your blood.

Ahluwalia: Yeah! Our dads were both engineers. We grew up with our family businesses on the dining table. We had already done a bachelor’s in India because in India the bachelor’s system—you could do it in three years because you don’t have such long summers. When we arrived here we picked up an associate’s, it was a two year program. This was pre-9/11 days so foreign students, it was slightly easier to get [a] work visa.

Sachin and I both inherited these amazing facilities that did beautiful embroidery work, print work, great foiling, lots of stuff. When you’re young and ambitious and kind of foolish, you have this vision of you want to do this, this, and this, and you want to take on the world, and you do, because you don’t have that many bills to pay. You have zest for life. So, we turned to our parents for a family loan. They liked the idea and the concept of it, and they said “Alright, but you two must marry.” We were in our early 20s, you know, far away from home. “Settle in and you’ll figure out your life together.” And we did.

We met Mr. [Oscar] de la Renta through a friend who was friendly with his lawyer, Jeff Aronson. A true six degrees of separation. We met our mentor and our first account in the first six months of business. He looked at our archives, our swatches, and says, “What do you two do? And you’re married? And you have a family business? Well, this is wonderful, okay, so let’s just…” Really an amazing introduction at such a young stage in our career. We learned the best of the best from [de la Renta] until he passed. In the design business, it’s small. Francisco [Costa] moved on from [Oscar de la Renta] to [Gucci], so we started doing work for that company. Then, we had friends who moved on to Valentino.

As we grew up in the business, our accounts grew. We learned from the finest in European brands. We developed our set of hands in Mumbai to the taste palette of what needs to be done here. What works in the Indian market typically doesn’t work here because the cultures are different, the palettes are different. So, we did a lot of development work, B2B ghost designing work. For the first 12-13 years of our business, we really honed our craft, building strengths, enjoying revenues, making a buck or two, and then you come to a point in life as a creative saying “This is wonderful, but these are legacy homes. I have a nice life now, but where are we going with this, Sachin?” We were well into our 30s then. And he was like, “Alright, let’s start our own lifestyle brand and our own point of view.”

We had a fantastic home company called Ankasa, gorgeous embroidered pillows, top of the bed, great linens… We had built that out, and then, in 2008, the crisis hit. I remember there were a lot of delinquent bills. “You know what? Let’s pivot into fashion.” Home is a beautiful business to be in, but it takes a while to scale things ’til you have something adaptable and cash-and-carry. Fashion we know well. Let’s add fashion to our point of view and let’s give it our eponymous label name. That’s the birth of Sachin & Babi. That was the “why” behind it.

When we started our business, we were very wholesale heavy. We had exposure to Neiman [Marcus], Saks [Fifth Avenue], and that was great for what it was, but then Covid taught you a lot, where you really can’t have reliance on these businesses. Fashion has changed so much. We really needed to build our own DTC brand. So, we brought in Amy and pivoted. Of course, we work with these wonderful department stores, but the exposure is limited and our own point of view is much stronger than where we were. When we had our own boutiques, we just wanted it to make sense of where we’re in the red and where we want to make these cleaner, smarter decisions.

Aldrich: The retail space is interesting. I find when I’m driving up Madison [Avenue] I just see “closed,” “for lease,” “for lease,” “for lease,” and it’s devastating, but I also know this is the ebb and flow.

Ahluwalia: I don’t know about the Texan girl. I think big cities like New York/LA have been through the cycle of how much of retail is needed, but Texas, here, it’s still… I think good ol’ brick and mortar still lives.

Aldrich: I know you’ve had a presence in Neiman’s. Where else down here have you had a presence?

Amy Riordon: We’re at Tootsie’s…

Ahluwalia: At Stanley [Korshak] we have a small presence, not too big.

Riordon: And we have a few other really small specialty stores.

Retail has needed a reinvention for the last 15 years. I spent a lot of time in Dallas and Fort Worth in my career because the company I worked for for nine years was headquartered in North Carolina, and the culture was very different, which is why I said to Babi, southern people are more social. They like to be out. They want to be around people.

There’s a better balance of life and work in different parts of the country, so it’s a social opportunity to go out. You take the time for yourself to go wander around and discover something. [New Yorkers] don’t do that. So, I get why the shopping happens here.

As far as the retail piece, I’m a very strong e-comm/digital person. I’ve worked in different models before. I was in [Account Executive], wholesale, retail. I came out of college, worked at Bergdorf [Goodman] for a year. My mom said, “get a wardrobe,” ‘cause I didn’t know exactly what I wanted. She knew I would find my place. So I worked there for a year and then I went on and worked on what was LCI, which is now Tapestry Group. It was Kate Spade; Tapestry is what they go by now. I’ve seen all the pieces of it.

For a brand like Sachin & Babi, it was really important to have some ownership over the customer experience to really build out their foundation based on data. I was marketing and branding, that was my whole thing, and then I was asked to go to a startup, supposed to be their VP of Marketing. By the end of day I was the President of the brand. This was for an intimates startup. I knew I needed to get into e-commerce and digital, and this was my opportunity. I’ve not looked back.

I think every piece of it is really important, but I think being able to intellectualize what each one of those channels is good for is [critical to the] brand. I believe wholesale is still critical from a credibility standpoint, from a showrooming standpoint, marketing standpoint…

For the most part we have to be controlling what the customer sees, and we can’t shift our point of view based on one store, which I think happens with some brands. It’s a challenge. I think your customer should be the one who’s helping you, not necessarily buyers. That’s the sort of data we were able to get once we really started investing in e-commerce. In the backend of your website, you can see where the conversion happens. You can see where they’re going, watch the pages that they land on, see the messages that they respond to. So, you can know your product better, and you can be more effective and more efficient, and you don’t have to be crossing your fingers. And you can still be as creative as you want to be, you just know which lane to go down.

Aldrich: Are you opening a store?

Ahluwalia: Within Texas. It doesn’t have to be Dallas. We’re looking closely at Houston.

Aldrich: I vote for Dallas. I know numbers talk.

Riordon: Data is also something that led us to Texas. As much as we love Texas just for being Texas, we have a strong customer here.

Ahluwalia: It’s totally Texas first, before Florida, even. Let’s look at Fort [Worth], I mean, does that area have an appetite for us?

Aldrich: We just got this beautiful hotel called Bowie House. They make a life-changing martini, and right now it’s housing the owner’s personal art collection. It’s incredible. They have a shop that Saks is curating inside the lobby. Essentially, there are stylists on hand for their guests.

Ahluwalia: What’s the property called again?

Riordon: [BO-wee] House?

Aldrich: [BOO-wee] House. Bowie is a famous Texan. He fought for the Alamo. It’s really a jewel for Fort Worth. We just got our first Le Méridien in downtown Fort Worth. Bowie House is in the Cultural District district by all our museums—world class, incredible. The DMA’s gorgeous, but, I mean, the Kimbell… if you’re driving on 75 you’ll see a Kimbell billboard. The Carter and the Modern are all incredible, and the architecture like, Louis I. Kahn…

Ahluwalia: I mean the fact you have that stone garden in Fort Worth, I was blown away.

Aldrich: The Water Gardens? My parents went there on their first date in the 70s. And Kendrick Lamar came and shot one of his videos there.

Ahluwalia: As he should! It’s a masterful piece of architecture.

Aldrich: And he was at the Modern, as well, with the giant KAWS sculpture and splashed around in the reflecting pool there. So, yeah, Bowie House is in the Cultural District, and Le Méridien is having its grand opening next week in downtown Fort Worth. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Drover. Hotel Drover’s in the Stockyards. That’s a masterclass on American West interior design.

What was your relationship with fashion when you were a little girl?

Ahluwalia: Growing up in New Delhi with a mom being in fashion and my dad being super poetic and creative, our weekends looked like a lot of cinema, a lot of plays when they would visit, a lot of the arts. We were immersed culturally as a family where we enjoyed the foods, the culture, the arts, so fashion was something that spoke to me for a sense of style, not that I really wanted to be a designer. I was always immersed in it, so it was a natural progression for me to be part of it.

When I went to college and majored in the history of art I was bored out of my mind and couldn’t finish. So, I interned with a premier fashion house, he’s no longer alive, Rohit Khosla, he was one of the premier designers out of India. I was all of 19, 20 and through a family connection I was his young intern and we were a team of six. It was a small shop, it was a great shop because he did beautiful, high end block-printed saris, these gorgeous embroidered outfits for weddings, trousseaus, so I was exposed to the best of fashion in terms of how it’s made, how it’s procured, how it’s presented. I’m six feet tall, I was a size zero, so I was an easy fit model. It was a great learning experience to the concept of fashion, and in [1989] YSL did his first show in India so I was like a young kid at 19 being front row. The immersion and exposure of an industry, I kinda caught the bug for me to be a creative within the space.

Aldrich: Is the fashion hub more New Delhi or Mumbai?

Ahluwalia: It depends who you talk to. At the moment, Mumbai… it’s questionable really. When you say bridalwear, when you say super high end embroidered bridalwear I would say it’s New Delhi now just because it has the space for it, the studios have the room to build it out. Mumbai is the commerce capital, it’s the commercial/financial capital, there are ready to wear stores—there are fashion homes, but it’s more scaled businesses there. So it’s really both Bombay and New Delhi, and we have Sabyasachi who’s out of Kolkata. Today India is bustling in terms of fashion in all its five metros and the B-Towns, really. I think historically, culturally, the country has a great appetite [for] beautiful wares, gorgeous, beautifully made things whether it’s textiles, embroidery, apparel, food, complex art, India has been a very interesting space for all things that’ve emerged from these markets. So, it’s a toss up who you talk to. I think Bombay, Delhi, Kolkata are great fashion hubs. All the big beauty hubs are between Bombay and Delhi, so that’s why sponsorships for big events, shows, bridal market week [are] in India. But the work, the actual textiles, I mean India is a treasure of all things textiles and texture.

Aldrich: Where do you find your inspiration?

Ahluwalia: Inspiration honestly comes from how we live, how our consumer lives. We are a brand where we don’t really sell you a dream, we actually want somebody to live in it. Today’s gal inspires me, I think, and inspires Sachin, and today our consumer is super inspirational because she is ever so mobile, ever so effervescent in her lifestyle. For us, it is movies, arts, culture, any piece of textile sometimes, so it’s very broad. Depends on the collection, truly.

Aldrich: What’re the pros and cons in terms of working with your partner?

Ahluwalia: The thing is, we met as children. So, I think when you kind of grew up together—I don’t recommend it to everybody—it’s not the easiest. Luckily we have the same vision so you just build and grow off it. And now it’s a bigger size company and he’s on the road more than I. He picked up the heavy lifting of doing the India haul, I did more consumer-focused stuff. I don’t think it’s easy on any marriage because I can’t ask how his day was. I know how his day was! (laughs) But it’s a true partnership, and you have a common ground, then you find your balance, you know? Truly.

Aldrich: When you were white labeling, before you started your line, what’d that look like? Would you design something and then present it?

Ahluwalia: It was very interesting. Because we were textile people, we had, over the years, beautiful silk organza pieces or silk pieces, or taffeta pieces, so we would embroider and embellish a repeat of an embroidery. Or show different ways of block printing. So if you’re ever in New York, I urge you to come into the studio. We have one part of our studio still our archives. We would actually take appointments with beautiful textile swatches, which were probably half the size of this table, and then you could drape it and see okay this would look good as this, as that, so it wasn’t really like a product development, CAD, sending CADs over. It was very, very tactile.

Aldrich: I also really appreciate you accommodating the size of a phone in your bags. Listen, not all labels! I also know that comfort is important for you with shoes.

Ahluwalia: As it should be. The facilities we work with actually manufacture for Tory [Burch] as well, so they’ve been in the business long enough in Asia, so the inner sole of the last of the heel is actually padded super well. Now we bring in a kitten heel, much to my pleasure.

Aldrich: (To Riordon) How long have you been with Sachin & Babi?

Riordon: I started in 2019, right before the pandemic.

Aldrich: And your expertise was brought in primarily surrounding e-comm?
Riordon: E-comm and marketing. My background is in branding, creative marketing, and then I got into the digital piece of it, because I needed to understand. I used to be able to spend all the money, right? Make all the beautiful things, and then when, the company I was with, I was invited to become a part of the executive team, I started to understand where the money was going, so I got a little stingier because I was like, I don’t see value that I’m adding with these assets because I’m not seeing it directly correlate to sales.

Aldrich: Assessing ROI.

Riordon: Right. It’s definitely a wonderful learning experience, because when you’re given a budget you can spend, and you think everything you’re doing is fabulous, then you get introduced to a PNL and full budget, and you’re like, “Oh. So, all of my beautiful ideas don’t actually make millions of dollars for us every five minutes?” That was a really great learning… that particular business was very hands-on. You might know this company—Doncaster at Tanner Companies. They’re originally from North Carolina. They’re all over the country and they have personal stylists. It was the Tanner family; it was a beautiful brand. They were very white glove and wanted to keep that experience of having personal stylists, so that’s why I’ve been to Fort Worth. We had stylists in Highland Park and I’d go to their homes when they were doing beautiful shows, visits, or whatever. That’s where I realized they did not want to go down the digital road because they felt that would be a conflict with their stylists. Their stylists were very afraid. It’s a more mature group of women, more expensive brand, and they felt that would take away from it, and I just knew that’s where the world was going. They had retail stores, too, in North Carolina and Georgia and those places. But I knew that’s where the world was going. They went out of business a couple years after I left. They were wonderful. It was such a fabulous experience for me. But it kind of pushed me forward. I took my first big chance before being at a startup that has absolutely nothing other than money and I learned, my skin got really thick, and I learned everything, compared to what I knew before.

Aldrich: It was really siloed before.

Riordon: I used to do all of our photoshoots and our campaigns, so I got to do all of these beautiful things but when you realize that doesn’t always ladder up to what you think it does. That was a good introduction for me. They brought me on for e-commerce and marketing, and I think in modern e-commerce you have to have a marketing background in order to be successful at it. It’s not operations. It’s being able to understand the customer, the right assets to put in front of her, the right message… it’s just a lot of different pieces, it’s not just looking at a spreadsheet. You have to read that data. So, I have those conversations with people a lot. You put together this amazing data, but what do you see in it? Because my experience shows me what we’re looking at. It’s not just numbers and conversions and questions. I can see what they want here, and then I go to that page and can see why they didn’t click through. There’s something on that page that stopped them from converting. That comes down to, was it not shot properly? Is it not the right language we’re using? Are we not campaigning hard enough against this? Is this not just something our current customer’s interested in? We don’t need to spin our wheels on something we tested, we tried it, we tried it again. That’s a big part of when I came, we started testing and learning.

Aldrich: What’s an example of something you were gung-ho about and then you saw the response and [thought] “Well, nevermind”? Was it a garment, a color?

Riordon: We know what color palettes work for us. We know now what types of prints work for us, and we even know the types of shapes of the prints. Things with sharp edges don’t necessarily work as things that are more beautiful and softer, that feminine piece of it, those seem to sell better. There’s certain palettes that work better. We have an ecote one season that works amazingly well, and then they want hyper realistic flowers the next. You figure out “How can I marry those two things so that the DNA of the brand is then symbolized?” because that’s important to have those moments that speak specifically to Sachin & Babi and their aesthetic point of view, and then the embellishment, we just really started going heavier again, because for a while there we pulled back on it because we were trying to be very practical, and then we…

Ahluwalia: …realized there’s no problem with that. Like Amy’s always said, we cater to a particular taste level, not to a price point. The appetite is there, and she understands it. She has a sophisticated palette. She gets behind it super fast. Actually very enjoyable.

Aldrich: I also love a day sequin. Also, “diamonds for day.” That’s absolutely Dallas: Dallas and diamonds. I love embellishment.

---

Resort 2025
Photos by Phyllis Lane

---

Ahluwalia: Come spring, we will show four shirts like this, and you can pair it with jeans or with your lovely skirt, and you may have a new wardrobe. Because we do everything elevated in terms of joyful dressing, we’ll have a lovely marketing campaign behind these four gorgeous white georgette tops, beautifully embellished, texture—we’ll show it that way.

Aldrich: Who do you look to for your personal style or inspiration? Whenever you’re thinking about a true style icon, who do you think of?

Ahluwalia: As a creative, or like somebody who enjoys fashion?

Aldrich: Somebody who enjoys fashion. If you were Bill Cunningham, and you had your camera, and you would wanna shoot that celebrity, or that lady on this board somewhere, or whatever it is.

Riordon: I don’t because there are so many people today that have such a unique style of their own, and then there are so many that are styled, so it’s not really their style.
When you first broached it, the first person who came to my mind was my mother. My mother was fabulously beautiful. My parents were in the airline industry when it was really glamorous. You know, opened up the international terminal at JFK, that kind of stuff. I could tell you who I’m looking at all the time now that I think is amazing, and it’s Demi Moore. I think she is aging insane and Brad [Goreski] is doing an insanely beautiful job styling her.

Aldrich: I’m sure y’all dress people for the Met, right?

Ahluwalia: We’ve done the Met Gala twice when we started the brand. Super expensive endeavor. I don’t know what it would bring for us, to the brand, at the moment. We still do the white gloving, we still work with Wes [Gordon] at Carolina Herrera, Lela Rose, and a little bit of Monique [Lhullier], depends on the season. Through Wes, we’ve done beautiful pieces for Demi.

Aldrich: Would you say your demographic is an older woman?

Riordon: Whenever we have this conversation, I always say I don’t wanna talk about age, I wanna talk about taste level. Because there is a woman at the age of 25 who’s locked and loaded with that taste, she just may not have that discretionary income yet. I will say that naturally we are a high intent brand, so a large portion of our customer who’s mature, more sophisticated, she’s coming to us and she’s spending $1,000, $1,295 for a special day, very special occasion. But we also have 30 year olds who are coming to buy. I look at it as you’re always inviting people in so they can graduate to the next level. As a team we decided we wanted to have a good, better, best strategy we hadn’t had before, because we believe really strongly your taste level is what we want to be appealing to. It’s our job to make sure everything that’s produced maintains the specific taste level so the person who comes in and buys a $365 dress from us looks just as beautiful and as comfortable as the woman who decided to buy the $1,100 gown. It also helps us maintain the integrity of the brand.

Aldrich: (To Ahluwalia) Whenever you say “maestros of design,” are you thinking of people from home, who are these incredible teams in India? Are you thinking about somebody you met on 7th Ave? Who is it that comes to mind?

Ahluwalia: Honestly, it is the artists. For example, our craftsmen when we inherited the facilities from Sachin’s parents.

My mom in-law started a women’s ready-to-wear business, embellished womenswear lines. Through her we had artisans… we don’t own their workshops, but we give them 12 months of work. Their sensibility and knowledge of the craft, whether it’s the beadwork, threadwork, their adaptability to understand the taste level we want. It’s meeting the artist from the craft, somebody with superior taste. To me, celebrities are wonderful, but they have a team of ten putting them together.

But then you meet this other lady, the owner of the most expensive tweeds to come out of Italy, handmade. She’s like Sophia Loren, put together by herself: the best beautiful Chanel suit, red nails, gorgeous cigarette box—18 carat gold—fantastic ostrich Kelly—to me style is style, craft is craft. I think people who are very original in their sense of songwriting, writing—true craft, true artisans…

Would I be delighted and excited that blah blah blah wore my clothes? Yes, of course. Because it has to meet the level of Law Roach or, you know, all the serious stylists there are behind the scenes, but it is a little much! It’s a little put together, as it should be, because it’s a business, but to me, my salute is always to the original craftsmen, the artists behind the trade, the craft, the talent behind anything. To me, I enjoy that. As I’m evolving as a creative, to me, there’s no better than somebody who has the inherent taste level, this kind of elevated sense of being.

Aldrich: I feel like Law Roach himself—

Ahluwalia: Is a celebrity!

Aldrich: A celebrity, yes, but also an impressive creative. He dresses Zendaya, right? Who else does he dress?

Ahluwalia: That’s it, I think. He took a beat, I think. He used to do Celine Dion. I know Law because we met in LA, and I think his dream is to be a creative director for a legacy brand, so I think that’s why he wants to position himself as a talent of that sort.

Aldrich: Schiaparelli‘s creative director is from Plano, which is a suburb of Dallas.

Ahluwalia: Daniel Roseberry. Really? To me, I think he’s a true artist. He is! Really, from Plano, Texas?!

Aldrich: I’m very proud of the fact that—I mean it’s Schiaparelli! Legendary.

Ahluwalia: Tom Ford is from Texas, too.

Aldrich: And Brandon Maxwell.

Ahluwalia: So there’s a lot of talent coming from here.

Aldrich: We’re not all driving cattle. Although, a lot of people can do both, and are very chic when they’re off the horse, too.

This is financial—in terms of trend forecasting and integrity of the design process, do you guys keep up with this exhausting fashion calendar where you’re doing pre-fall, fall, resort, spring…

Riordon: I don’t think we do it because of the fashion calendar anymore. We do it because we need newness and it’s the expectation of the customer, right? So we follow that calendar because we also have wholesale, and it’s important for them to have it.

Aldrich: So you have market week, and all that.

Ahluwalia: We’re actually finishing market week as we speak. So we have full, big collections, two main ones, fall and spring, and then…

Aldrich: Do you show?

Ahluwalia: No, we used to. We did the whole song and dance of doing beautiful shows at Cedar Lake Dance Theater, Lincoln Center…

Aldrich: Talk about a money suck.

Ahluwalia: And also, internally, big stress on all the team. All that has become a circus, I hate to tell you. Fashion week in New York, I was there for the Voter Walk March. I mean, god bless Ralph [Lauren], but he’s done it out in Bridgehampton, so everybody’s gone for the day, nobody can attend any other shows. It’s a free-for-all and people are doing what they’re doing just because the business has been turned on its head, in a way.

Aldrich: And Alexander Wang is like, “Here’s a basement out in the middle of nowhere.”

Ahluwalia: I know. So, no, we cannot foster those activations.

Riordon: I think it’s a lot of modern brands that are emerging, even if they’ve been in existence for a while, have decided to connect more to the customer than to the press…

Ahluwalia: I mean, Oscar’s not doing shows anymore. That says something to you.

Aldrich: End of an era.

Riordon: You have to control a narrative, right? So, now you can reach out directly to the customer, you don’t have to get all the press just this one time.

Ahluwalia: I mean, I’m a believer in shows, that’s why in November we’re coming back to the shows, but it’ll be more consumer-focused. It’ll be “buy now, wear now”—this will be present for the holiday season. I think it’s more conducive, and that’s what happened to us when we were doing the last few shows we did at National Arts [Club]. It was a fall show, I still remember, Karen Katz was in the front row, one of our friends whom I knew through six degrees of separation, pulled me backstage, and said, “Babi, I love what you did, it’s great, my son’s getting married in April, do you think look #XY… oh, but you’ll have it in October,” and she was very upset! This doesn’t do any good for me. And that was a lightbulb moment saying we’re getting these goods too early. Yes, you have to make them early, because it takes three months to fruition from start to finish, then the mill takes time to produce fabric, but we don’t need to present it so early to the consumer that she doesn’t know what to do with it.

Riordon: And she forgets about it! Instead, she picks something else.

Ahluwalia: That still means something, I think. Salon-style shows, beautiful shows still have relevance. But to do it in a timely fashion when it makes sense to the consumer, that’s how fashion started, if you remember.

Riordon: Intimate, salon-style, beautiful, boutique.

Ahluwalia: It was look #19.

Aldrich: And they were holding a number. Retro. I feel like now it’s less utilitarian and more of a… like, a buyer doesn’t need to come to the show.

Ahluwalia: She comes to the showroom.

Riordon: And they’re not filling those seats anymore with the same people they used to. Now, it’s people who are taking pictures and videos to put on their own social media in order to enhance the brands in that way, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Aldrich: With the right people that would be really great. I was thinking about how you were able to stage something in Dallas in someone’s home. I think that’s so lovely. Those are the people who want to spend. And that is nice, and very Dallas, frankly, to have that welcome-to-my-home hostess moment.

---

Sachin & Babi Dinner at Beverley’s Bistro & Bar, Dallas, October 2024
Photos by Kaitlin Saragusa

---

Riordon: We want to do community building here. We think it’s really important to get to know the town we want to be our home. We want to make sure the neighbors like us, and we like the neighbors, you know?

Aldrich: That’s so true. I’ll say the Hadids built a house in Fort Worth.

Riordon: Yeah, cause Bella’s dating a rodeo champion.

Aldrich: He rodeos, and then Bella Hadid was doing that activation in the Meatpacking District to close out Fashion Week. She’s on a cutting horse, which means she’s learning out to isolate one cow. There’s a lot of agility involved. Because of this guy, now Yolanda’s moved down here and built this fabulous house.

Ahluwalia: Is she here in Fort Worth?

Aldrich: Just west, where there’s a little more space.

Ahluwalia: How long is the flight from here to LA?

Riordon: Three to three and a half hours.

Ahluwalia: Not that close.

Riordon: We’re very equidistant in the country.

Aldrich: That’s why so many people are based here. It’s interesting. There have been a lot of folks coming to build—that’s also a note about your market and what you’re considering. Bella’s walking around in the Stockyards, and because people in the Stockyards don’t know who she is, she has a freedom which is lovely for her, but also, like, surprise attack! There’s Bella! And the New York in me, I don’t say anything, but I think, “This is awesome. Welcome. Glad to have ya.”

Especially as it pertains to women and how we move through the world and the hurdles that we face, specifically, I like to ask people what they wish they could tell their 12 year-old self.

Ahluwalia: That it all works out. You have to lead with a sense of purpose, a sense of drive, a sense of humor, a sense of agility, a sense of adaptability, and that it all works out. There’s always the glory, and there’s always a gift of the rise, but there’s so much learning from—I hate the word failures, but, you know, there’s so much learning from there, too. I think having a positive bent of mind, a calm sense of aura, is important.

Riordon: There are no rules. You’ll get there how you get there.

Ahluwalia: Well said.

Riordon: Don’t try to keep up with anybody else, don’t compare yourself to anybody else, you’re going to be just fine.

---

Some fashion I had fun compiling based on this post: