Raghavendra Rathore

Raghavendra Rathore is an Indian fashion designer. He was one of the first designers to use the "Brand India" positioning for a fashion company. He also works in interior design, wedding and events design, accessories and jewellery.

Early life and career

Raghavendra Rathore was born and raised in Jodhpur, Rajasthan and is a member of the royal family of Jodhpur; he is a cousin of Maharaja Gaj Singh of Jodhpur. He studied in Jodhpur until the age of eight. After his school was bombed during the Indo-Pak war, he was sent off to the Mayo College boarding school in Ajmer, where he finished his intermediate schooling. Soon after, he set sail to the US, where he studied a variety of liberal arts from anthropology, astronomy, modern American fiction, and robotics at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He studied and worked in the US for about a decade, an experience that has shaped him as an individual, exposing him, in contrast to his conservative upbringing in Jodhpur, to a world that he could have not experienced or imagined otherwise. He then studied arts and philosophy at the Marlboro College in Vermont, and went on to graduate from the Parsons School of Design in New York City, in 1992. After graduating from Parsons, Rathore went to work for Donna Karan as an assistant designer for DKNY. He then worked at the high design atelier of Oscar de la Renta, and was an assistant to de la Renta. He worked in Paris with de la Renta, when de la Renta was hired to design for the house of Pierre Balmain.

Stakeholder

Reliance Industries Ltd owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani & Ermenegildo Zegna the Italian fashion giant have both purchased a 12.5% stake each his company "Raghavendra Rathore Jodhpur" in July 2018.