‘The Power Dressing’, made personal for women

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First-of-its-kind Tricity initiative by designer-entreprenuer Inupreet Kaur brings bespoke corporate wear to women, with individuality, confidence & presence at its core

Chandigarh, September 13

“Women spend so much of their lives in professional spaces, yet corporate clothing is often treated as something functional rather than something that can express who they are.”

There is a familiar little irritation in getting dressed for work: The blazer that looks perfect on the hanger but pulls at the shoulder, the trousers that fit everywhere except where they should, the outfit that says “office” rather more loudly than it says anything about you.

For Chandigarh-based designer and entrepreneur Inupreet Kaur, that feeling became the starting point for The Power Dressing (@thepower.dressing), a bespoke corporate-wear concept created exclusively for women and introduced as a first-of-its-kind offering in the Tricity.

Born and brought up in small Punjabi town of Pathankot, Inupreet comes from a world of events and luxury experiences. As the founder of MAHA The Events (@maha_theevents), she has spent years thinking about presentation, detail and the little things that make an experience feel considered. With The Power Dressing, that instinct has found its way into clothes.

The idea is wonderfully simple: Why should a woman fit herself into the clothes when the clothes can be made around her?

When the suit stopped being a uniform

Power dressing once came with a fairly strict dress code, i.e., broad shoulders, sharp tailoring and the formidable suit of the 1980s. For women stepping into workplaces and positions of authority, it was often a visual language of seriousness and command.

But the story has never been quite that rigid.

Hollywood icons Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn made trousers and tailoring part of their identities, while Coco Chanel, a French fashion designer and businesswoman, helped loosen the rules around women’s clothing with practical, relaxed silhouettes. Today, the suit can be oversized, fluid, colourful or deliberately understated. Coming to Bollywood, Alia Bhatt has embraced polished, pared-back tailoring, while Deepika Padukone has taken it towards bolder proportions.

The suit, in other words, has become less about looking powerful and more about deciding what power looks like on you.

That is where Inupreet’s idea feels timely. She wants professional clothing to be confident and sophisticated, but also feminine and personal. “I want women to feel powerful without compromising their femininity, and elegant without losing their individuality,” she says.

The pleasure of a perfect fit

The collection brings together power suits, statement blazers, coordinated trousers and skirts and refined corporate separates. The silhouettes are structured, but not stiff; polished, but not overly formal.

The real luxury, however, is in the making.

A garment begins with the client’s proportions rather than a standard size. Silhouettes, jacket and trouser or skirt styles, lapels, collars, sleeves, colours, fabrics and finishing can all be considered and customised. Styling can also be shaped around profession and occasion.

It is easy to underestimate what these details can do. A shoulder that sits properly changes the line of a jacket. Trousers cut for the wearer can make a long day feel considerably less long. The right fabric can give a suit structure without turning it into something you cannot wait to take off.

And then there are the enjoyable decisions such as the colour you keep coming back to, the lapel that feels just right, the fabric with the fall you like.

For Inupreet, this attention to detail is instinctive. Her own style leans towards the clean, polished and structured, with comfort kept firmly in the picture. Her advice to women is similarly uncomplicated: “Dress for the room, but do not disappear into it!”

For anyone building a more senior professional wardrobe, she suggests starting with a few exceptionally well-fitted pieces that can be mixed and styled in different ways rather than chasing every new trend.

Clothes that work as hard as you do

Good work clothes have a practical brief. They need to survive long hours, meetings, travel, presentations and the occasional dinner that was never in the original calendar.

The Power Dressing uses premium fabrics chosen for structure, comfort, fall and durability. A statement blazer can change the mood of an outfit; tailored trousers can work with more than one jacket; a well-cut suit can move from a client meeting to an evening engagement with a change of styling.

That versatility matters because professional lives are not particularly neat. A lawyer may want the quiet authority of a sharply cut suit. An entrepreneur may prefer a distinctive blazer. An executive may need elegant separates that travel well.

There is no universal formula and that is precisely the point.

“For me, bespoke is not just about getting the measurements right; it is about understanding the woman behind the outfit,” Inupreet says.

There is something appealing about that promise in an age of standardised sizing and fast fashion. Not having to settle for “almost right” is a small luxury, but a meaningful one.

From boardroom armour to personal style

The power suit has also escaped the boardroom. It appears on red carpets, in airport wardrobes and in everyday city dressing, helped along by fashion and pop culture. But the more interesting change is quieter: women are choosing tailoring because it makes sense for them, not because it is the prescribed uniform of ambition.

That shift sits neatly with what Inupreet is building in Chandigarh.

The Power Dressing is aimed at professionals, founders, executives, consultants, lawyers, entrepreneurs and business owners — women whose days may move between meetings, travel, presentations and social engagements. The ambition is not to create another corporate uniform, but a collection that can become part of a personal professional identity.

“What makes The Power Dressing different is that we are not simply creating clothes for the office. We are creating a personalised power wardrobe for women,” Inupreet says.

The venture was recently introduced at Novotel Chandigarh, with plans to take the concept beyond the Tricity to other major Indian cities and build on the bespoke experience through personalised consultations and curated collections.

For Inupreet, the larger idea is less about dressing for authority and more about feeling at ease with the way you present yourself.

Perhaps that is the most interesting evolution of power dressing from armour to expression, from uniform to choice.

The real power, after all, is in wearing something that feels unmistakably your own.