House of Serein and the New Language of Indian Vegan Luxury

The Chhavi handbag has a cutout that makes the space around its handle part of the design. Black cactus leather gives the bag its structure, while a panel of blue banana leather draws the eye across its angular silhouette. A silver finish on the hardware picks up the cooler tones of the blue. Look closely and there are several decisions to consider before anyone gets to the most unusual thing about the bag: neither of its two principal materials is an animal hide. For House of Serein, the New Delhi fashion label founded by Muskaan Mundhra, that order of discovery matters. A bag has to be worth looking at before its provenance becomes a reason to look again. It joins a growing group of vegan luxury fashion brands leading the change in 2025.

The idea that began with beauty

Mundhra began thinking about an Indian luxury house while she was still in school. She was struck by the gap between the richness of India's fashion and textile traditions and the visibility of Indian brands in international luxury. At Pearl Academy, where she studied luxury brand management, that broad ambition became more specific. Learning about the use of animal hides in fashion prompted her to consider what an Indian accessories label could make if it took them out of the design brief from the start. Her path sits alongside the top influential Indian female fashion designers shaping the national conversation, and Anita Dongre and her plant based luxury vegan accessories show that the idea is gaining ground across Indian fashion.

Beauty gave her the first opportunity to put that conviction into practice. At 21, she launched Serein Cosmetics, a vegan beauty line. Another young founder story is how Marina Raphael built a luxury handbag empire at 22. The Serein business dates to 2021, and House of Serein followed in 2022 as the fashion arm. The move from cosmetics to handbags meant asking customers to reconsider one of the category's most familiar markers of quality. A good handbag must keep its shape through a long day, open easily in a crowded car and feel comfortable after an hour on the shoulder. Its material is part of how it meets those demands and part of what makes someone want to carry it in the first place.

When a material becomes a design decision

Cactus and banana appear side by side in the Chhavi and in the more compact Chaaya. Elsewhere, Serein's bag catalogue includes materials derived from pineapple and eucalyptus. The house describes its banana material as drawing on fibres from the plant's stem, and its pineapple material on fibres from the leaves. For more on that fibre, see sustainable luxury with the power of pineapple. Those are two distinct agricultural byproducts, and the distinction is worth making. The word vegan describes the exclusion of animal ingredients. A plant name identifies a source of some of the material. The composition of the finished sheet, including any backing or coating, is a further part of its provenance.

That precision feels especially appropriate in luxury, where a buyer is accustomed to hearing about the mill behind a cashmere coat or the origin of a coloured stone. A bag made with a newer material invites similarly specific questions. How does the surface flex at the opening? How is an edge finished where two panels meet? What can be repaired if the zip fails or the strap wears out? The answers would tell a buyer more about the life of the object than any of the broad environmental adjectives that circulate in fashion. Readers new to the idea can start with what sustainable luxury actually means for buyers. Other alternatives are also entering the market, such as Mylo as a sustainable replacement for leather in fashion.

Mundhra has said that the house designs and manufactures in house, checks materials and asks suppliers for documentation on sourced components. She has also described saving cuttings for later designs, where the remaining pieces can find their way into another bag or a smaller accessory. That is a practical design constraint. A large panel asks for a continuous sheet, while a trim or insert can begin with a piece that remains after the first pattern has been cut. In a collection already interested in contrasts of colour and texture, those smaller pieces have a visual role to play. It echoes the future of luxury fashion in conscious creation, where leftover material becomes part of the design.

Muskura, a collection with its own vocabulary

Introduced in April 2025, Muskura takes its name from the Hindi verb for smiling and echoes Mundhra's first name. The connection gives the collection a personal register. Its names, from the feeling evoked by Ehsaas to the shadow suggested by Chaaya, are one of the ways the house makes its Indian identity felt. They carry a familiarity that can survive the transition from a conversation in Delhi to a product page read anywhere in the world.

Ehsaas is among the collection's most expressive pieces. A printed scarf winds around the top handle, introducing a softer line against black cactus material embossed with a floral pattern. Gunmetal hardware keeps the bag's metalwork subdued. The scarf recalls an old habit of dressing a favourite handbag with a piece of silk, the sort of small gesture through which a person makes an object feel like their own. Here that gesture is already part of the design, giving a structured bag some of the movement of clothing. The printed fabric also nods to India's glorious textile diversity and its traditions.

Chaaya and Maaya make a study in scale. Chaaya takes the geometry of the Chhavi into a narrower shape, just 21 centimetres long, with a top handle and a detachable strap. The proportions give it the intimacy of an evening bag. Maaya, at 34 centimetres across, is a shoulder bag designed with two outward faces. Navy cactus material, white contrast detailing and quilted side panels give it a more architectural presence. The interest lies in how differently the two bags use structure. On the Chaaya, it defines a small object sharply. On Maaya, it gives a larger bag enough character to carry either way.

An Indian point of view on the everyday bag

The handbag is an interesting place to look for a contemporary expression of Indian luxury. It must work across ordinary settings: a meeting, a flight, a restaurant table, a wedding weekend. It has the intimacy of something carried close to the body and the public visibility of something set down in plain sight. A distinctive bag can express taste through proportion, colour and the way it is held. House of Serein adds a layer of recognition through its naming, its recurring blue and the way it uses details such as the scarf on Ehsaas to soften a carefully drawn silhouette.

The category is large, with the luxury handbag market size set to cross 90 billion dollars according to one report. Readers curious about the other end of the market can look at the most expensive handbags in the world, and some buyers also ask whether luxury handbags have become a better investment than art. A bag like this one is chosen for daily use. Shoppers weighing such choices may also like top ecofriendly Indian brands and why you should buy from them.

There is also a practical dimension to the house's idea of luxury. Its wider range includes totes, backpacks and wallets alongside compact occasion bags, and its product pages describe a one year warranty for manufacturing defects. That promise matters in a field where customers may be encountering cactus or banana leather for the first time. Part of the pleasure of owning a well made bag is knowing what happens after the first wear. The closure, the strap attachment and the ease of reaching inside can eventually matter as much as the silhouette that prompted the purchase.

The pleasure of a second look

Return to the Chhavi and the eye goes first to the opening framed by the handle, then to the blue against the black. There is a difference between admiring an object in a photograph and imagining it in your own hand. The first is a matter of line. The second brings in weight, touch and the quiet question of whether you would reach for it again tomorrow. House of Serein is most persuasive at the point where both kinds of attention meet. Mundhra's insistence on working with alternatives to animal leather explains how the bag came to be. The pleasure of looking at it twice explains why someone might want to live with it.

House of Serein | The Luxury Abode Brand Profile

About the Brand

House of Serein is a New Delhi fashion label founded by Muskaan Mundhra, whose work in vegan beauty preceded her move into handbags and ready to wear. Its accessories pair plant derived leather alternatives with a design language that ranges from the crisp geometry of Chhavi to the floral embossing and printed scarf of Ehsaas. The Muskura collection captures the house at its most personal, drawing on Indian language and familiar gestures of adornment. Its particular appeal is the combination of a recognisable point of view and the easy intimacy of a bag made to be carried often.