The ‘Keep Walking’ campaign, “is not about the destination, but about the journey,” says acclaimed designer Rahul Mishra as he speaks on his collaboration with world number one Scotch Whiskey brand, Johnnie Walker.
It is perhaps nowhere more elegantly crystallised than in his limited-edition design for their Blue Label bottle for the Indian festive season. Johnnie Walker’s Blue Label is as elite as they come and it’s only fitting that a highly sought after designer like Rahul Mishra be the one to the bottle and pack design. Mishra illustrates a bright festive night, with blooming flowers and spirited animals, symbolising a bright beginning that embraces hope and prosperity. It’s a project born, he says, “for the sake of aesthetics and expressing ourselves.”
“I was just looking at how the festive time feels visually,” he explains. For him, Indian festivity begins when the monsoon withdraws and the sky clears into a luminous blue. It is a season of “a lot of flowering,” of raat ki raani (Jasmine flowers), tiny white blossoms which give “the most beautiful fragrance ever.”
Mishra remembered sleeping on village rooftops during school holidays, looking up at the Milky Way – a memory that became the celestial crown of the bottle.
“The top of the packaging is reminiscent of the Milky Way,” he says, describing how he layered sky, foliage, animals, and architecture into a single visual celebration. Deer, rabbits, flowers, night jasmine – each detail represents “the idea of fragrance, the idea of feeling.”
The result is a world where nature isn’t an accessory but the protagonist.
“Nature celebrates this festivity,” Mishra says, and the bottle mirrors that celebration through an intricate, almost dreamlike composition.
Being the first Indian fashion designer to be invited to show at Paris Haute Couture Week, Rahul Mishra is renowned for his exquisite embroidery and mastery of colour as well as his commitment to slow fashion, ‘mindful luxury’ and supporting local artisans.
Interestingly, although the bottle echoes the celestial and nature-rooted motifs of his widely discussed Zendaya look for the NMACC gala, Mishra hadn’t intended a deliberate connection. When it was pointed out, he laughed at the coincidence: “Zendaya’s outfit was also all about… foliage, nature… everything sitting and looking up at the night sky.” The similarity, he reflects, comes not from repetition but from his instinctive artistic language, an impulse to honour beauty, inclusivity, and wonder.
Mishra’s approach to the Blue Label collaboration is inseparable from his larger philosophy of mindful luxury, shaped significantly by his 2014 International Woolmark Prize win, an experience affirming that Indian craftsmanship could resonate globally.
“What we create can be truly global… but yet deeply rooted in Indian ideas,” he says. His commitment to slow, hand-crafted processes is also a form of livelihood creation; as he puts it, “A slower process… creates opportunity for people who do not have work today.”
For Mishra, sustainability extends beyond production. It is also about longevity, emotional value, and the refusal to create disposable beauty. Even if something is produced industrially, he says, its life can be meaningful if it is cherished. That intention is evident in the bottle, which people immediately began treating as an art object. At an event in Dubai, Mishra recalls looking for display bottles after the party only to discover they were gone.
“Somebody stole them… because they really loved the bottle so much,” he remembered. To him, that reaction signals true sustainability: an object designed to live on.
Ultimately, Rahul Mishra views this collaboration with the same respect and passion he gives to his couture work. Whether crafting an otherworldly gown for Ariana Grande or designing a bottle for a global spirits icon, the impulse is the same: slow creation, deep craft, and emotional resonance. The Johnnie Walker project, he says, is “done from the heart,” a continuation of his belief that luxury should evoke stillness, connection, and beauty.
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