Studio Log - May - July 2026
The studio log runs you through the minds of the design team as they explain their own personal tasks, challenges and goals through a month or two at GARUDA.
SUHAIL (CLOTH MAKER)
i had to look at the previous studio log to figure out what the fuck been going on since last time.
Suhail looking at the past Studio logs
so all those failed interviews for tailors, inability to hire more tailors, and our lack of tailors bottle neck?
5 new tailors as of writing this. literally doubled the team. and they’ve all stuck around and are enjoying the environment and the work (i know because i did our first ever quarterly one on one meetings with everyone on the team. real ahh business dawg)
Our studio Canvas Companion breaking down cuz nobody buys him
the highlight has been some non male tailors joining the team, now the males will stop burping and farting all the time i hope.
all of them are doing well. following our usual training structure. teach them the shirts and nothing else. a couple have graduated onto blousons now. and then eventually they will learn pants. then it’s all systems go teach them all sorts of weird shit like the shelter coat.
i noticed that mushrp and gurkamal wrote about me going to europe in both their parts. so i guess i should talk about it. i went to europe. who cares. i hate travelling. i like my house. i love my dog. outside sucks. but had to go for work reasons, which all went very well and were productive so no complaints minus how shit “not my house” aka travelling is.
gurkamal went away after i came back. for his birthday. which was brilliant because i didn’t have to hear the week long build up of “oh damn my birthday is coming up” - “man getting older is crazy” - “20whatever whoa man” shut up bruh no one cares open capcut and edit the damn video.
we managed to pull off all the masters pants back log finally. then dropped v2 and the new shirts we’ve been teasing for months and overall are surprised by how well the new shit did. we knew it would do fine but ghat daym boi.
hiring the new content assistant and customer service people has been pretty solid. for the first like month i wanted to rip my ears off because of the frequency of questions. and briefly i did ask myself did i make a mistake. but now… there’s been days i have sat and designed or done what interests me for 8 hours no interruption. so yeah definitely paying off, glad they are here and figuring it out.
now i’m kinda locking in for annual collection. have started making progress on samples and i have the concept and whatever else sorted. im slightly behind schedule wise on it considering the shoot dates are scheduled. but i have faith i will begin to steam roll once i have the first 10 samples out of the way. that’s how it usually goes every year.
The three stooges
let’s see what happens.
GURKAMAL (SHOOTER)
May began with our founder leaving the fucking country to touch more clothes. Which left me in a predicament…yet again. Although not as bad i'd say because orders were still being shipped and everyone knew what they had to do which is to just make more Masters Pants. So noone was eating my ass and I had enough ass left to breathe and do what I do best - make content.
Average Gurky day in office
My star studded cast (Suhail) wasn't here so I had to make do with what I had - me. I knew how to make other people look entertaining but not me. So I worked on a couple reels by myself, put them out, they had good interaction but not great. I knew I could do better. The ONE REEL where I just went ape shit and unsupervised and posted without a second thought….the Industrial Hand Bag reel….blew up. That reel was like an afterthought to me because I didn't think it would really do that good. But good it did do. Time to channel more un-supervision. Suhail had come late May and after a long session of Gossip Girl, we went back to catching up with him on work and preparing for yet another event - me leaving the fucking country lol.
New content assistant using another content assistant (tripod) for his content
We hired a content assistant (Harshill) to help me with shooting and editing because with great cameras comes great responsibility and also a great desire to jump off a fucking cliff. He chill ig, definitely has that chronically online it-doesnt-make-sense-but-sounds-cool humour. But he has an actual fashion degree unlike me so maybe a new perspective might be good lets see.
I fucked off to Europe in June and had my Into the Wild, Motorcycle Diaries, Midnight in Paris adventure shit going on. Made a few dutch friends who i eventually converted into GARUDA enthusiasts because hustle never sleeps. It was super hard as usual. Meanwhile, there wasn't much content being put out, probably because Suhail kidnapped the new guy to help him with design stuff.
Gurky in Amsterdam or whatever
We also impromptu planned a meetup in Amsterdam for GARUDA enjoyers to come and talk to me and also with each other (as if I could form more than 4 sentences in a minute) I lost my commute card on the way and also got confused at the platform and missed my train because everything was in Dutch but stubborn as I am, I reached. We held the meetup in Wanakam Cafe, a South Asian inspired place with great chai and even better staff. The place gave me the vibe of like your friend's place that you choose to hangout at every other day because it feels homely. The people were great and everyone had something going on that they were working towards which was pretty inspiring. The staff was very chill too, most of them were young people like me choosing to work there because they believe in bringing the culture to Amsterdam and also to themselves. Spent a good time after the meetup just hanging out with them.
Above and Below : Wanakam Cafe GARUDA event and vibes 
The next day I had an interview with OpenCloseMag. The founder brought cookies and wine and after the interview we had a really summery wine picnic at a park sitting by a lake. It was nice to see another person who's spent years building an independent brand by themselves and eventually with a team. Caught the train back absolutely hammered.
And spent my birthday there so at least Suhail can rest easy knowing I wasn't there for the week-long announcements.
Came back to work to run into more new faces and tailors and suddenly wondering whether we been bought for some shit. But a load off me and Suhail's back because we learnt the great art of delegating and unlearnt the tragic art of being control freaks and micromanagers.
Gurky using both cameras at once for B-Roll and freaking everyone out
A couple weeks after me and Suhail went to Kullu to check out a wool fabric that we been sampling for new products, especially Masters Pants. Car broke down on the way and we were wondering whether we were meant to be stuck in the mountains and devolve back to being apes for a change. But the more I see the fabrics being hand made and woven, each string is carefully put in place to form a million kind of weaves, the more I realize how much more there is to the world and to each and every craft that I've barely heard in passing in all my life.
Suhail explaining the weave formation on the new wool fabric (its goated)
uhh yeahh…that's about it. lotta travel these past months (hopefully more and more)
Two stooges
MUSHRP (QC QT-PIE)
So yeah I was saying that our lovely boss left for Europe trip, leaving us behind with one new addition (Riya), we wished her new journey and whatever. She joined our little circus from the dry state of Gujarat. I don’t know man. How do these people survive without alcohol there? Yeah, alcohol banned in Gujarat, crazy. This new joinee had zero idea what to do, because Suhail wasn’t around, but clever little boss already had ideas about it so he made sure that when he was away for work in Europe and shit, we had some work to do.
Mushrp and Sharan breaking bread together.
Yeah, back to work, we have a lot to pack and we were all tasked with work (full load). And Suhail came back from his lovely little Europe trip and bought us gifts. And then Gurky left for his little euro trip, yeah, funny coincidence. They were supposed to go together to Europe, but some, you know, timeline fuck up happened so that that’s why he couldn’t go, and now he went to Europe trip had fun and whatever. anyway.
Suhail doing Mushrp
All of the pants needed to be packed down to sent to customers, before that there were lots of changes to the make and shit, fixing the pants and Q.C-ing them down. If there’s a little bit of problem, it needs to be fixed down and shared, packing all those pants and QC-ing them down was a really hectic and mental job.
At some point, we made half of the production line do QC. It took them more than 3-4 days to clean their mess up and shit. And then in July, we had another addition join us.
Average lunch break
New intern to clean up the mess that we have made with packing stuff and sharing emails and talking to customers. It’s like a customer service person. You know, to take care of that mess. Sharan is about to leave his internship now, yeah, his internship is over now. I miss that ass, but whatever, we had new people for the production line, like new additions I mean, women have joined us for one thing - work and it’s really nice. They are all cooperating and coordinating according to plan, and it seems to be going really good.
Well for some genuine reasons, maza aRaha hai, but we can’t stop the work hell now, then again, new kids have joined us. Harshil for content creation is here to help Gurkamal out and that’s it for now,
that’s how I spent my May, June and July.
One stooge