From Tailor-Made to Ready-to-Wear: How Louis Philippe Taught India to Dress Like Royalty

There was a time in India when buying a shirt meant buying cloth. Men picked a fabric, took it to the neighbourhood tailor, and waited for it to be stitched to their measurements. Branded readymade menswear was very limited until the early 1980s, partly because of exactly this habit.

That was the market Madura Garments walked into. Madura Coats India, then a 51 percent subsidiary of the UK-based J&P Coats, entered ready-to-wear in the mid-1980s through Madura Garments. The Aditya Birla Group acquired Madura Garments in 2000, and it was renamed Madura Fashion and Lifestyle. The Madura business is credited with changing branded apparel in India.

Among the brands it built, one carried the name of a king.

A King's Name, an Indian Brand

Louis Philippe is named after Louis Philippe, who was King of France from 1830 to 1848. Despite the French name, the brand originates in India. It was launched in 1989, and the Aditya Birla Group says it created the super-premium segment in the Indian market.

The brand's identity is built around a tagline and a symbol: "The Upper Crest," with a crest that stands for fine taste and fine living. The idea was clear from the start. A Louis Philippe shirt was meant to feel like an upgrade from ordinary clothing.

It Started With a Shirt

Louis Philippe began as a shirt brand. In India, the company noted, shirts are outerwear, while in international markets they are often worn as innerwear. That made the shirt the most visible garment a man wore to work, and so the place to win trust.

Over time, the brand's promise grew. In the company's own description from 2005, it moved from being the perfect shirt to offering the best in every occasion. Louis Philippe also came to lead in trousers and suits, expanded into t-shirts and winter wear, and added ties, belts, socks and cufflinks. It also offers made-to-measure suits and trousers, which the company said no other premium readymade brand in India matched at that time. That detail neatly closes the loop with the tailor tradition where the story began.

Growing the Family

The brand did not stand still. According to the Aditya Birla Group, Cubix launched in 1999, Riviera in 2002 and the Spirit of Italy collection in 2005. By its 2005 account, the brand had crossed ₹175 crore in sales at MRP in the previous fiscal year, and it called itself India's menswear superbrand and the benchmark for formal menswear. Those are company statements from that time, not independent measures.

The company also noted that the brand's understanding of Indian shoppers came from about 15 years of consumer bonding and market research.

Today, Louis Philippe is part of Madura Fashion and Lifestyle, a division of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail. One source describes it as one of the largest apparel brands in India as of 2018, though that claim carries a request for better sourcing, so treat it as indicative.

What Louis Philippe Teaches Us

The brand's story offers a clear lesson in timing and positioning. It arrived when Indian men were used to the tailor, and it asked them to trust a label instead. It did that by promising something above the ordinary, and by keeping the made-to-measure option for those who still wanted it.

More than three decades on, the crest is still the same, and so is the promise it makes: to dress the Indian man as if he were somewhere near the top of the crest.