The founder of RKIVE CITY doesn’t just recycle clothes, he reconstructs memories, identities, and entire systems of value. Between Delhi, New York and the textile towns of Punjab, Ritwik Khanna has built a fashion language where repair becomes a badge of honour, waste becomes material, and garments carry emotional afterlives.
How did your journey into fashion begin?
I think my journey started from my parents. I come from a town which is very well known for its textile ability. I’m from Punjab. We do a lot of beautiful weaving. A lot of textile is made there. My grandfather and his family used to run a dyeing unit, so a lot of textile would come there to get dyed. That’s where I grew up around. My father’s a weaver. He makes cashmere scarves and shawls and throws. And my mother used to run a kid’s clothing store with my grandmother. So yes, it’s almost a family tradition. I would like to believe I come from the side of makers. Every day they would talk about the count of a yarn, whether the fibre was good or not, the quality of the textile that was coming out. And then my mother and grandmother opened this kids’ store when I was little, and every customer would throw clothes on me to check the sizing. I was basically the mannequin of the shop. That was my introduction to fashion.
Did you study fashion afterwards?
Yes. From there, it led on to my love for photography and filmmaking. But fashion was also a huge part of my school life. In India, at my boarding school, we had about six different uniforms in a day. Morning physical training, school uniform, afternoon rest uniform, evening PT, ceremonial uniforms, temple service uniforms… everything had a different outfit. At the time, it annoyed me a hundred percent. But because we weren’t allowed to express ourselves freely, people found ways to do it within the uniform. The skinnier your trousers were, the cooler you were. Some people removed their tie. Tiny gestures became signs of rebellion and individuality. Now that I’m older, I actually love the idea of uniform. There’s freedom in not having to constantly decide what to wear. I wear the same thing over and over again. This is probably the eightieth time I’m wearing this outfit this year.
How did RKIVE CITY eventually come to life?
After school, I wanted to be a filmmaker and photographer. But I realised fashion was the one world where I could do everything: make films, write books, create clothes, build imagery. So I went to study fashion business at FIT in New York. It was my first time in America, and I discovered a completely different world. I realised that brands were spending eighty percent of their costs on selling a product, while only spending five or ten percent on making it. That imbalance really shocked me, because I knew how difficult life was for the makers back home. My father would be given a hard time if colours didn’t match perfectly, while brands elsewhere were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing. At the same time, I discovered thrift stores. In India, that culture barely existed. But suddenly I could buy old pieces with incredible quality, pieces that had already lived. That completely changed the way I saw clothing.
Is that how the archival aspect started?
Exactly. I became obsessed with archival clothing and started reselling vintage pieces. That’s where the name came from too. I liked the word “archive”, and since my name starts with R and my last name with K, I turned it into RKIVE. And “City” came from this idea of building an ecosystem, a new way things could work, where reclaiming becomes the first act. But then COVID happened overnight. I had to move back to India and left everything in storage in New York. Back in India, I discovered the reality of post-consumer textile waste. I spent months in Gujarat and Panipat working directly with people sorting through mountains of discarded clothing. And I realised vintage was only 0.1% of the problem. Everybody wanted the same Levi’s 501 from the 1940s to resell for thousands of dollars. But that wasn’t going to solve anything. I became obsessed with the remaining 99.9%. The pieces nobody wanted anymore.
How did reconstruction become the core of the brand?
At the time, chemical recycling was becoming huge. Companies were buying old cotton garments, sending them to Sweden to break them down, then to China to make yarn, then back to India for fabric, then to Portugal for garments. And everybody called it sustainability. I was like: this makes no sense. So we started building a garment-to-garment reconstruction project directly in India. People have been upcycling forever, of course. But we wanted to standardise the process enough to create a true ready-to-wear line, while keeping the emotional irregularity of reconstructed pieces. That became the core of RKIVE CITY.
Can you walk us through your design process?
For me, there are always two sides. One is mechanical: there’s so much textile waste. White shirts, blue jeans, pinstripe trousers, herringbone jackets… pieces that have existed for hundreds of years and now sit abandoned in closets or warehouses. So the first question is always: how do you put them back into the supply chain? How do you deconstruct them and revive them?
The second side is emotional. Sometimes it comes from personal stories. My old boarding school was turning 150 years old and asked me to create a fashion show there. That became my dream project. I put everything into it. I love taking these reconstructed garments into environments where people would never expect them, and making them desirable without immediately telling them they are upcycled. The dream is when somebody looks at a piece and simply says: “This is beautiful.” Not: “Oh, this is sustainable.”
But do you still feel the need to educate people?
A hundred percent. But education has to happen very silently. It has to fascinate people rather than burden them. A lot of sustainability brands communicate through guilt: the world is dying, pollution is everywhere. Of course we know that. We live in Delhi. We breathe it every day. But I’ve realised people connect more emotionally first. If I say: “Buy these jeans because they save ten thousand litres of water,” it’s less powerful than saying: “Here’s a really beautiful pair of jeans, and by the way, they also save water.” It has to begin as a love story with the garment.
What parts of Delhi feed into the universe of RKIVE CITY?
Delhi is fascinating because it still has this balance between greenery and city. There are jungles in the middle of the capital. There are Mughal ruins, stepwells, mid-century homes, brutalist buildings, tiny workshops, incredible food. There are so many layers here. You can feel traces of Mughal architecture, British influence, local craft traditions, all coexisting together. And then there’s the people. Delhi has fun. You find strange energy everywhere if you pay attention.
Do you feel your relationship to clothing is different from broader Indian fashion culture today?
A hundred percent. A lot of people still want things that glitter and shine. Repair hasn’t traditionally been worn as a badge of honour in India. At RKIVE CITY, repair is the badge of honour. Fixing something should feel more valuable than replacing it.
Has there been a particularly emotional interaction with your community?
So many. People come with their parents’ old jeans and tell me: “I just lost my father. He wore these every day. Can you turn them into a jacket so I can keep him close forever?” And you can actually do that. When they see the final piece, they cry. It’s an unreal feeling. Clothing stops being an object. It becomes memory, grief, presence. That emotional connection is irreplaceable.
Your favourite place in Delhi?
Years ago, it was Hauz Khas Village. Back then, it felt like a real cultural hub: galleries, musicians, bootmakers, parties, artists, travellers. That’s actually what made me fall in love with Delhi. Now it’s become over-commercialised. Today, I feel something similar in Chhatarpur. It’s quieter. There are galleries, cafés, theatres, good food, creative people helping each other. We all knock on each other’s doors asking for advice. That sense of community is what keeps me here.
Ritwikkhannaa
Rkivecity