A celebration of Simran Dhond’s art of redefining lingerie through emotion and Indian craftsmanship
In a world where the fashion industry often feels distant from small-town aspirations, the journey of Goan designer Simran Dhond stands out. Rooted in Goa, shaped by resilience and fuelled by the belief that beauty, craft and comfort can coexist even in the most intimate layers of clothing, she represents a new generation of Indian designers who blend technical mastery with mindful design. As the Founder of Simmydoo and Lead Designer at Carbon Tree, Simran’s story is a testament to intentional creativity and homegrown craftsmanship.
Her love for fashion began quietly. Growing up far from India’s bustling fashion circuits, her glimpses of style came through friends who travelled to Mumbai or abroad and through the carefully chosen garments her mother brought home from work trips. One memory remains vivid, being gifted a delicate lacy garment with the promise that she would wear it when she was older. These early moments planted the seeds of her fascination with beauty, fabric, and expression.
Yet society had its own expectations. Fashion was rarely seen as a ‘real’ career and was often overshadowed by the glorified STEM path. It took deep reflection for Simran to realise that design offered the perfect blend of art, heritage, mathematics, and business. Clearing the NIFT entrance exam without coaching became her turning point. Although she did not enter the Fashion Design department, she chose Knitwear Design, something that felt disappointing at first but later became her greatest advantage. Knitwear taught her to understand fabrics that embrace the body, eventually shaping her approach to intimate wear.
Simran spent a semester in Tokyo, Japan learning about precision and their dyeing techniques, graduated as Student of the Year (2019) and also won Best Design Collection. This opened the doors to her Master’s degree in Contour Design at De Montfort University, Leicester. There, she explored the engineering of lingerie in depth, learning how to merge aesthetics with technical accuracy. Internships with UK-based brands like Nudea and London Contour Experts strengthened her foundation. A spontaneous message on LinkedIn eventually led her back to India as a junior designer at Nykd by Nykaa during the pandemic. She worked across categories including lingerie, sleepwear, athleisure, and menswear while gaining hands-on exposure to factories and large-scale production.
The vision for Simmydoo was clear from college hence while working full-time, she sketched, sourced, experimented, and visited factories across India, only to realise that none were willing to take on her small yet intricate production requirements. This challenge took her to China, the global centre of the intimate wear supply chain, where she absorbed technical and manufacturing knowledge that later became central to her brand. Alongside this journey, she contributed to building Carbon Tree, a company focused on sustainability and comfort-driven design. Carbon Tree taught her the balance between creativity and commerce, a lesson that now sits at the core of Simmydoo.
Simmydoo is built on intimacy in design. The brand blends modern silhouettes with Indian craftsmanship, using organic cotton knits enhanced with Chikankari and Kasuti embroidery created by artisans including Goan women trained at her studio. Simran’s work reimagines sensuality through softness, heritage, function, and emotion. Her inspirations come from temple sculptures, mythological goddesses, comic books from her childhood and the quiet strength of everyday women. To her, lingerie is not merely clothing. It is an experience that deserves cultural grounding and thoughtful design.
Creating a single piece is a meticulous process. A bra can involve up to forty-eight components that must come together with precision. Her process begins with a story or an emotion, followed by research, sketching, fabric exploration, and multiple rounds of prototyping. She listens intently, whether it is to customers, to her team or to the women who stitch each garment. Their insights into movement, fit and comfort shape the final outcome. Simran sees design as a dialogue rather than a direction.
Building Simmydoo in Goa brought its own set of challenges. The state lacks specialised garment manufacturing units, especially for intimate wear. When no factory agreed to produce her detailed small-batch collections, she built her own. She set up an all-women production unit and brought experienced masters to train Goan women in lingerie construction and embroidery. Today, Simmydoo creates world-class intimate wear from Goa, redefining what fashion from a small state can accomplish.
The brand’s breakthrough began with her NIFT graduation collection ‘Kaafi Amorous,” which won Best Design Collection and later featured at India Intimate wear Fashion Week and Leicester Fashion Week (2019). She shared behind the scenes glimpses, hand embroidery sessions, fittings and material experiments. The brand attracted a growing community that valued honesty and craftsmanship over fast fashion.
Simmydoo continues to grow. The brand plans to explore swimwear, resort wear and customised bridal trousseau lingerie that allows brides to co-create handcrafted made to measure pieces. Upcoming collaborations with textile artists and craft clusters across India, aim to integrate traditional embroidery into contemporary intimate wear. For Simran, fashion is not just design; it is cultural storytelling.
At her studio, she looks for team members who combine skill with empathy. Lingerie demands precision and sensitivity, and her team understands the importance of comfort and structure. One of her proudest moments was when a new seamstress Siddhata, only three months into her role, used leftover fabric to create a bralette and knicker set, an expression of creativity and freedom that Simran cherishes.
Balancing her leadership roles at Carbon Tree and Simmydoo is demanding, yet Simran credits discipline, delegation and deep passion for helping her maintain clarity. She sees both roles as extensions of her identity: one strategic and one emotional –each influencing her growth as a designer and leader.
To aspiring designers, her advice is clear. Start small, read widely, practice consistently and trust your creative instinct. Trends fade but authenticity remains. She reminds young creators that beginnings do not have to be perfect; they only need to be honest. Recalling Shah Rukh Khan’s iconic words “Kehte hain agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho…”she believes that every journey unfolds at its own pace. The story of Simran Dhond is one of determination, cultural pride, and thoughtful innovation. From a Goan classroom to international runways, from technical knitwear to handcrafted intimate wear, she has created a brand that celebrates the divine, the everyday, and the deeply personal. Simmydoo is not just intimate wear. It is craft, comfort, identity and the quiet confidence of every woman who chooses to wear it
