A 70 year old load bearing building in Pondicherry's White town is restored into a contemporary fashion Atelier. Fashion designer Naushad Ali approached TAS wanting to design a flagship store that broke from convention: not a display case for clothing, but a space as quiet, tactile, and rooted in craft as the garments. Working within a structurally load bearing shell meant the studio could not simply reshape the space to fit a retail program, every intervention had to work with the existing walls, openings, and proportions, keeping the softness and character of the original building intact while introducing new elements with restraint.

The outcome was a 1,500 square foot retail environment shaped around textiles, materiality, and touch, designed to encourage a slower, more intuitive engagement with the collection than a conventional store allows. A restrained palette of natural Tandur stone, timber, ceramic, and muted tones creates a calm backdrop, with walls, floors, and ceilings kept deliberately neutral. Furniture and display elements were reduced to their essentials and chosen specifically for how they would age, with the intention that the space grow softer over time.

Existing doors and timber elements were retained and restored wherever possible, and the build was carried out with local makers and collaborators from Pondicherry and Auroville, who contributed the ceramic work, stonework, and landscaping throughout.

Spatially, the store unfolds as a sequence of quiet rooms rather than a single retail floor. Visitors enter through a large timber framed pivot door into a small vestibule, where a japanese garden creates a pause between street and store, a custom teak shelf holds objects Naushad collected on his travels, and a moon vase sits as a sculptural centerpiece. Beyond, the main retail room opens around restored timber joinery and suspended garment rails, anchored by a Naga bed and lit by ceramic pendant lights. A restored cupboard displays folded garments and scarves, while a record player, vinyl collection, and two armchairs form an unplanned listening corner, an invitation to linger. Further in, smaller rooms hold menswear and bespoke pieces, styled with custom display stands and photographs drawn from Naushad Ali's own fashion archive.

Throughout, the studio held a deliberate tension between vernacular craft techniques and a cleaner, quieter international visual language, choosing to leave the imperfections of handmade materials visible rather than smooth them away. That tension is also the project's lasting contribution: a retail model for Pondicherry built almost entirely from regional materials and regional hands, yet legible to an international eye, and designed, deliberately, to keep improving with age rather than requiring renewal.

As Naushad Ali put it, the ambition was for the store to feel "like a quiet gallery or a lived-in space where the garments could breathe", connected to Pondicherry, without ever being themed around it.

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