A groom sat in my studio last week, buttoning into a sherwani so heavily worked in zardozi that he looked, in his own words, like he was wearing his father's achievement rather than his own wedding day. He wasn't wrong. The embroidery was beautiful. It was also doing all the talking, and he wanted to say something himself.
That fitting has been on my mind all season, because it points to a real shift I'm watching happen across almost every groom I dress right now. For years, the formula for a serious wedding look was simple: more thread, more shine, more surface. This year, my grooms are asking for the opposite. They want fabric that holds the room on its own, without a single motif doing the heavy lifting.
The Quiet Confidence Taking Over Groomwear
I think of it as the quiet luxury moment finally arriving for Indian menswear. Ivory and off white are still the backbone of most wedding wardrobes I build, but they're increasingly sitting beside sage green, slate blue, muted lavender, and a warm charcoal that reads as formal without feeling heavy. These are not safe colours chosen out of fear. They're deliberate, and they ask a lot more of the fabric underneath because there's nowhere for a dull weave to hide.
That's exactly the point. When you take away the embellishment, the raw material has to be good enough to carry the look alone. Raw silk, Banarasi silk, Chanderi, Tussar, and a well cut lightweight velvet are doing that job beautifully this season. They catch light the way embroidery used to, except the shimmer comes from the weave itself moving as he walks, not from stitched metal sitting flat on the surface.
The Aesthetic: Tone on Tone, Not Loud
The Aesthetic I keep returning to with my grooms is tone on tone threadwork, where the embroidery exists but is worked in the same shade as the base fabric, sometimes a half tone lighter or darker. You see it rather than notice it. It catches the eye under the mandap lights and disappears in a casual daytime photo, which is exactly the kind of versatility a groom's wardrobe needs across a multi function wedding. I'm also seeing a real return of the Nehru collar on sherwanis and bandhgalas this year, worn clean and unfussy, sometimes with the faintest piping at the edge instead of a full border. It's a collar that photographs like architecture.
Layering is the other piece of this story. An open front jacket worn over a fitted kurta, both in the same tonal family, gives a groom three distinct looks (jacket on, jacket open, jacket off for the dance floor) without a single additional outfit change. For a sangeet or a reception, that kind of built in flexibility is a gift, not just a styling trick.
The Stylist's Touch: Where I Still Let the Craft Show
The Stylist's Touch here is knowing exactly where to spend the ornamentation budget once you've pulled it back everywhere else. I'll push a groom toward a restrained base outfit and then let one element carry real craft: a hand knotted brooch, a safa with a single kalgi, a stole in a contrasting weave, or juttis with subtle gota detailing. Kunal Rawal and Shantanu & Nikhil have both been doing this kind of editing beautifully in their recent collections, treating the silhouette as the main event and the accessory as punctuation, not decoration. The rule I give every groom is simple: pick one or two things to lead, and let everything else support quietly. The moment you have three loud elements competing, the whole look starts arguing with itself.
Colour is doing some of the heavy styling work too. I'm steering my bolder grooms toward deep emerald, oxblood, midnight blue, or a dusty rust for the evening functions, worn almost monochromatic from kurta to jacket to mojaris. A head to toe tonal look, done in a textured fabric, reads far more expensive than a brighter outfit covered in surface work, and it photographs better against both daylight and string lights.
Building a Wardrobe That Doesn't Repeat Itself
The real styling challenge for a groom isn't any single outfit, it's sequencing four or five of them across a wedding week so none of them feel like a rerun. I usually build from texture first and colour second: a crisp linen or cotton silk kurta set for the haldi and mehendi, something that can take movement and heat, then a structured bandhgala or sherwani in raw silk for the main ceremony, and finally the boldest tonal colour for the reception, where the lighting and the dance floor both reward a bit more drama. The baraat entrance gets its own separate consideration entirely, since that's a look built for distance and movement rather than close up detail.
Here is what I'm telling every groom in my chair this season:
Choose fabric texture over embellishment density. A well woven raw silk or Chanderi does more visual work than heavy zardozi ever will.
Let one accessory lead, whether it's a brooch, a safa with a single kalgi, or a statement mala, and keep everything else quiet around it.
Build your wardrobe in a tonal arc across the week: lighter and breathable for day functions, richer and monochromatic for the evening.
Don't skip the Nehru collar sherwani or bandhgala if you want a photograph that still looks sharp in ten years.
Save your boldest colour, whether that's emerald or oxblood, for the reception, where the lighting will actually reward it.
Treat the baraat look as its own outfit, not a repeat of your ceremony sherwani.
Why This Matters to Me
I always tell my grooms that style isn't about how much you're wearing, it's about how clearly it reads as you. A quieter, better made fabric says more about a man's taste than a shirt full of embroidery ever could, and that's really the whole SGK philosophy in one sentence: restraint, done with real craft behind it, is its own kind of luxury. Watching this generation of grooms choose texture over volume has been one of the more satisfying shifts I've styled through, because it means the wardrobe finally feels like it belongs to him, not to the occasion.
If you're building your own wedding wardrobe and want help finding that balance between restraint and real presence, I'd love to talk it through with you. Come sit with me, bring your questions, and let's find the fabric that actually speaks for you.
With love and style,
Shreya Gupta Kedia
Founder, SGK Styles
