Tarun Tahiliani

Tarun Tahiliani Biography

Tarun Tahiliani is an ace fashion designer associated with Indian fashion Industry at present. He, along with his wife Sailaja co-founded Ensemble in Delhi, India’s first multi-designer boutique in 1987, a time when Indian fashion industry had just started to flourish in India. He also started Tahiliani Design studio in 1990. Over the years, apart from conducting several fashion shows across the country, Tahiliani is also popular for designing bridal dress collection.  He combines traditional aesthetics with modern design, which is regarded as his signature.

Tarun was born and brought up in Mumbai to a Sindh family. His father Radhakrishna Hariram Tahiliani was a Four-Star Admiral in the Indian Navy. His mother Jaswanti Tahiliani was the first female engineer in Mumbai. His mother died of cancer while he was at school. His father later remarried Meera, as insisted by his mother and she has been a great person, says Tarun. He grew up being exposed to the arts — painting, music and theatre.  He had a knockknee problem. So he couldn’t participate in sports. He is very close to his sister Tina and they together attended piano lessons and Pearl Padamsee's theatre classes.

His schooling was completed at different cities, as his father was posted at different places. Later he completed his schooling from The Doon School, a boarding school in Dehradun in the year 1980. Though he joined St. Stephen's College in Delhi for graduation, he discontinued his studies to move to New York and later completed his studies at Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. He met his future wife Sailaja while he was at US. They got married in 1980 and returned to India.

The couple opened 'Ensemble' with help of designer Rohit Khosla in Mumbai. It featured the works of 5 fashion designers. In 1991, he joined Fashion Institute of Technology in New York to study about fashion designing as he had no formal knowledge about fashion. Now completed 25 years in the field, Ensemble has stores both in Mumbai and Delhi.

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Updated: March 20, 2016