Cricket Walks Milan: What Dhruv Kapoor's RCB Jackets Mean for Models
Milan opened its Spring/Summer 2027 women's shows on Tuesday, and the first Indian name on the calendar arrived carrying something unusual: a cricket team. Dhruv Kapoor showed his collection, titled Presence, at the CNMI Fashion Hub in the afternoon, and the pieces most people came to see were statement jackets built with PUMA and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. It is the first time a brand from the Indian Premier League ecosystem has reached a Milan runway.
The idea sounds simple until you look at who it puts in one room. PUMA brought the sportswear engineering. RCB brought a fan base that fills stadiums in Bengaluru every season. Kapoor brought the handwork and construction that gets a designer onto Milan's official schedule in the first place. The jackets sit at the meeting point of those three, and they will not stay on the runway. PUMA has said the limited pieces go on sale through its own stores and Kapoor's channels after the show, with a wider collection timed for the 2027 IPL season in March.
Why a cricket jacket on a Milan runway matters
For years the story of Indian fashion abroad has been couture. Embroidery, drape, bridal weight, the slow crafts that Paris put on its July calendar this summer. This is a different kind of export. It is India's most commercial cultural product, cricket, walking into the most commercial fashion capital, dressed as ready-to-wear rather than as a gown.
That shift reaches models faster than most industry news does. A couture show casts for stillness and line. A sportswear crossover casts for something else. Brands want walkers who read as athletic and current, who can carry a heavy technical jacket without looking swallowed by it, who move like the clothes were built to be worn to a match and not only photographed. The brief changes, and the faces that fit the brief change with it.
The brief is moving toward movement
This has been building for a while. Activewear labels have been landing in India and casting for energy over polish. Global shapewear arrived and asked for real bodies over sample-size uniformity. Now a cricket franchise is on a Milan runway. The through line is the same in all three. The Indian model who can only do one register, elegant and motionless, is competing for a shrinking share of the work.
The next decade of Indian modelling will reward range over a single look, and the crossover shows are where that range gets tested first.
None of this retires the runway walk or the campaign still. Those pay, and they still open doors. But a booker reading briefs this season can see the direction. A client casting a sport-meets-fashion capsule is not looking for the same portfolio a bridal house wants. Models who train for both, who can shoot a clean e-commerce grid on Monday and carry a structured jacket with attitude on Wednesday, are the ones who stay booked across the whole year instead of one season of it.
What to take from it if you are building a career
The practical read is short. Learn to move on camera and on a runway, not only to hold a pose. Keep a part of your portfolio that shows energy, streetwear, and sport, because the briefs asking for it are multiplying. And watch where Indian names land next, because each new type of show, couture in Paris, ready-to-wear in Milan, a cricket collaboration on a global stage, widens the range of work a model based in India can actually reach.
Kapoor's jackets will sell out, get worn to matches, and turn into a footnote by next season. The more durable thing is the precedent. An Indian designer took an Indian sport to Milan and made it look like it belonged there. The models who gain from it are the ones already preparing for a job description that keeps getting wider. You can see the range that gets cast today across our roster, and we will keep tracking where the briefs go next in the Insider.
