Maketh Thou is Our Leather Dream
Maanasa Muralidharan channels her childhood in Chennai, India, when her father worked in the leather industry.
Photo by Andrea Sabugo
Maketh Thou is a brand that is leather to the core. It embodies ‘becoming,’ as its name translates to ‘Make You’ in Shakespearean. For Maanasa Muralidharan, her journey in the leather industry was not a coincidence but a destiny. Growing up in Chennai, the heart of India’s leather industry, Muralidharan was driven by her father's dedication, who has been a part of this industry for over 40 years. Her passion for leather, a material that she believes has a unique ability to transform and evolve, grew vigorous, leading her to create unique and intricate leather pieces.
“Being a first-generation entrepreneur, there wasn’t much to begin with,” Muralidharan says. “The office was just the terrace of our home covered with asbestos sheets; we had one staff, two to three workers who worked on a per-piece-made basis, and the computer was in our family bedroom. We had leather in one small store room, transported them from the tannery and forth in our family car that my grandfather would drive. Everyone was involved.”
Muralidharan has been artistic her entire life. She grew up watching a lot of anime and reading manga, fueling her love for visual arts. Soon after she began sketching anime, she became galvanized by the fashion within the Japanese comics. Her family household also had a cable channel of solely ‘80s and ‘90s Hollywood, giving Muralidharan a sense of international fashion in the United States.
Photo, Styling and Creative Direction by Amy Mazius, Metahaiku
“After dinner, we would sit down as a family to cut out pieces of leather to make little swatch cards that my dad would then send out to international brands to land a manufacturing opportunity,” she says. “Ever since, we’ve worked with fifty-plus international brands over a period of twenty years. Since I was exposed to the international market at a young age and most of my life, I think I saw what worked, what didn’t, and more so, the endless possibilities that fashion as an industry holds.”
Since starting Maketh Thou, Muralidharan has experimented with various leather treatments, but the one that stuck for her Fall-Winter 2023 collection was Plongé. The soft leather gives a matte and bouncy finish reminiscent of certain denim silhouettes. She wanted to expand on the Plongé this season, so she studied structure, form, and volume in leather. Nostalgia played a vital role in this research. As she watched Shameless and Derry Girls last year, Muralidharan gained a sense of pop culture to incorporate into this new collection: the classic biker silhouette with exaggerated shoulders, fitted around the waist, heavy metal hardware, Moto pants, and mini skirt.
Muralidharan designs with intention. She aims for timeless, high-quality pieces you can keep in your closet for a lifetime and pass down for generations. She wants wearers to style each piece differently on any given day; dress a Maketh Thou piece up or down. Muralidharan’s ultimate goal is to encourage people to feel however they want in their clothes.
Photo by Andrea Sabugo
“I look at the brand now and see how differently it speaks to each individual,” Muralidharan says. “The potential of the brand has opened up so vastly that it also opened up my mind as a designer. And the ‘box’ that I was previously trying so hard to fit the brand into no longer exists.”
Since attending Parsons for Fashion Marketing and Communications and creating Maketh Thou in 2022, people have worn pieces from the brand for all different types of occasions: from girly to coquette, androgynous, layered, to an F1 race, to a date night, and even to run errands. Although Muralidharan is physically based in Chennai, Maketh Thou is also creatively based in New York City, influenced by the city’s vibrant neighborhoods, Lower East Side boutiques, thrift stores, street culture, nightlife, and the talented artists she’s encountered as she’s traveled here.
Because Muralidharan is so devoted to quality leather, one of her most significant setbacks is fast fashion and the production of low-quality faux leather. Maketh Thou was created to bring high-quality at accessible prices. It may be a generational craft that is laborious, but it’s worth being affordable and in retail stores so people can touch, feel, and experience the brand’s mission of fulfilling all sensations while making you look and feel good.
“I want to create more job opportunities through my factory here in Chennai — bring and train more women to become skilled artisans,” Muralidharan says. “Most importantly, to make meaningful things. Will someone who purchased it pass it down to their kid, or will they keep it as a piece they’ll forever treasure? Will it go to some niche thrift store, and someone’s eye just lights up when they see our piece? That is how I would like to function for the next few years. I read somewhere in my days as a student about how, as a designer, your brand should grow with you, and I’m hopeful the people that found out about us yesterday or the ones that discovered us today or the folks that will find us tomorrow grow with us as a community.”
