Kunaal Kyhaan Seolekar: Designer, Founder, and the Mind Behind KOY

Most designers choose a medium. Kunaal Kyhaan Seolekar chose a mythology.

Over the course of a career that spans furniture, fashion, interiors, and objects, Kunaal has built something that is harder to define than a portfolio, a coherent aesthetic universe rooted in Indian mythology, craft tradition, and a specific idea about what luxury means when it comes from this part of the world. KOY collectible furniture. KOYTOY fashion. studioHAUS interiors. Three distinct practices, one unmistakable sensibility.

This is the story of how that happened.

The Beginning: Pune, Design School, and an Obsession With India

Kunaal Kyhaan Seolekar grew up in Pune, a city with one of India's oldest and most active design cultures, shaped by its proximity to both Mumbai's commercial energy and the quieter, more craft-oriented traditions of Maharashtra.

Design school sharpened an instinct that was already there: that India's visual vocabulary, its mythological imagery, its craft traditions, its relationship with material and symbolism, was underused. Not in the nostalgic, revival sense, but as a genuinely contemporary source. That the lingam form was as architecturally sophisticated as anything in the Bauhaus canon. That Bandhani resist-dye was as technically rigorous as any European printing tradition. That Indian craft wasn't a footnote to world design history, it was one of its primary chapters.

That conviction has never changed. Everything Kunaal has built since flows from it.

KOY: Collectible Furniture Rooted in Indian Mythology

KOY began as a furniture practice, and remains, at its core, a meditation on what Indian design objects can be when they are made without apology.

The pieces in the KOY collection are not reproductions of historical forms. They are new objects that carry old knowledge. The Cosmos Marble Dining Table, with its hand-carved Indian marble top and lingam-form legs, draws on a form that has existed in Indian sacred architecture for millennia, and recontextualises it as a dining table that could live in a contemporary home in Mumbai, London, or São Paulo. The Bubble Cylinder side table. The Pai Chair. The Prism Console. Each piece is specific in its material logic, its craft process, and its symbolic reference.

KOY pieces are made in small, mindful batches in India. They are not mass-produced. They are not fast design. They are made to last, and made to mean something.

The label "collectible furniture" is precise: these are objects that hold their value because they are genuinely rare, in the sense of being irreplaceable in design intent, craft process, and cultural specificity.

KOYTOY: Fashion as a Second Language for the Same Vocabulary

KOYTOY emerged from the same design logic as KOY, applied to the body rather than the room.

Every KOYTOY shirt begins with an original print, conceived, illustrated, and produced in India. The Rain shirt carries a monsoon downpour rendered in the visual rhythm of Indian textile tradition. The Beach shirt draws on Mughal miniature painting. The Jumma shirt, the Dancing Peacock, references the iconography of Indian devotional art. The Bandhni shirt uses a crinkle-finish viscose crepe to echo the texture of Bandhani resist-dye from Rajasthan.

The KOYTOY fashion collection spans shirts, coord sets, and jewellery, all built around the same principles as the furniture: original craft, Indian material tradition, and a silhouette that is generous enough to move in but structured enough to mean something.

KOYTOY has been worn at film festivals, art fairs, music launches, and beach resorts. It photographs in a way that most clothes do not. The reason is not styling, it is specificity. A strong print with a clear point of view will always read better than a garment that made no choices.

studioHAUS: The Interior Design Practice

The third practice under the KOY umbrella is studioHAUS, the interior design studio that works on residential and hospitality projects in India and internationally.

studioHAUS takes the same material and symbolic vocabulary that runs through the furniture and fashion work and applies it to whole spaces. The resulting interiors are neither traditionally Indian nor generically contemporary, they occupy a specific position that is harder to place but immediately recognisable once you've seen it.

The Awards: What They Mean, Not Just What They Are

EDIDA Designer of the Year, Elle Decoration International Design Awards

The EDIDA is the most prestigious award in international design publishing. Elle Decoration's global network of editors votes annually across categories and countries, and the Designer of the Year is the top individual recognition. It is not a regional award. It is not a category award. It is a statement that one designer's work, in one year, represented the most significant contribution to design internationally.

Kunaal Kyhaan Seolekar won it.

To understand what that means in context: the EDIDA shortlists and winners typically include designers from established European and American design centres. An Indian designer winning the top individual prize is not a precedent that gets set quietly. It is a signal that the vocabulary Kunaal has spent a career building is now being recognised at the level it has always deserved.

EDIDA Young Talent

Before the Designer of the Year win, Kunaal was recognised with the EDIDA Young Talent award, the same body identifying the same practice at an earlier stage. The progression from Young Talent to Designer of the Year is not common. It reflects a sustained body of work, not a single breakout piece.

Gen Next, Lakmé Fashion Week

Gen Next is the programme at Lakmé Fashion Week that identifies and platforms Indian designers at the beginning of their careers. The alumni include many of India's most significant contemporary fashion names. Kunaal's selection placed KOYTOY at the beginning of its public life within the most important showcase for new Indian fashion.

The Aesthetic: Relics of the Future

The phrase Kunaal uses to describe the KOY design philosophy is Relics of the Future, objects and garments made now that are designed to become significant over time. Not antiques in the old sense. Not heritage reproductions. But pieces made with enough craft integrity, symbolic depth, and design rigour that they will still be worth examining in fifty years.

It is an ambitious claim. It is also, looking at the work, a defensible one.

The furniture pieces are made from materials, Indian marble, solid hardwood, hand-formed fiberglass, that do not degrade in the way that MDF or fast-fashion viscose does. The prints on KOYTOY shirts are original illustrations, not licensed graphics or trend-response patterns. The jewellery, pendants, studs, rings, is made from stone and metal chosen for permanence as much as appearance.

This is not nostalgia. It is a considered bet on longevity.

Where the Work Lives Now

KOY furniture ships internationally. The full furniture collection is available to view and commission, with lead times that reflect the handcraft process.

KOYTOY fashion is available online at koy.store and ships worldwide. New shirt prints and coord sets are released in small batches. When a colourway sells out, it is typically gone.

studioHAUS takes on interior commissions by inquiry.

For everything else, press, collaboration, commissioning, or simply finding out more, contact through koy.store.

Kunaal Kyhaan Seolekar is the founder of KOY collectible furniture, KOYTOY fashion, and studioHAUS interiors. EDIDA Designer of the Year. EDIDA Young Talent. Gen Next winner at Lakmé Fashion Week. Based in India.