From Real Mangoes to the Met Gala: How the Mango Jaal Was Made
A custom crochet structure, a bronze mango sculpture and a design challenge that asked the hand to be both precise and almost invisible.
The Mango Jaal was a custom hand-crocheted structure created by 3.10 by Guggi for Isha Ambani’s Met Gala 2026 appearance. Commissioned by stylist Anaita Shroff Adajania, it was designed to carry and frame a bronze mango sculpture by artist Subodh Gupta. Real mangoes were used during development to test the structure’s scale, fall and fit.
The mango that made everyone look twice
The 2026 Met Gala was held on 4 May to celebrate The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Art exhibition, with the dress code "Fashion is Art." Isha Ambani arrived in a gold Gaurav Gupta look that brought together couture, jewellery, art and Indian craft. Yet one of the smallest elements of the ensemble quickly became one of the most discussed: a mango held at the wrist inside a fine crochet structure.
From a distance, and especially through fast-moving red-carpet images, it was easy to read the object as a mango-shaped handbag or even as a real fruit. That uncertainty was part of its visual power. It made people pause, zoom in and ask what they were looking at.
Vogue India later clarified that the accessory was a crochet bag by 3.10 by Guggi holding a hyper-realistic mango sculpture by Subodh Gupta. The Nod similarly identified the custom crochet piece as part of a look styled by Anaita Shroff Adajania. For us, however, the most important part of the story began before the carpet - with a very specific design problem.
What the Mango Jaal actually carried
The Mango Jaal was not conceived as a novelty fruit bag. It was a support structure created in dialogue with an artwork. Its purpose was to carry and frame Subodh Gupta's mango sculpture while allowing the sculpture to remain the central visual idea.
Gupta has repeatedly transformed familiar objects from Indian life into sculptural forms. The Pinault Collection describes Aam Aadmi as a work featuring hand-painted bronze mangoes that honours the "common man" and elevates a fruit with deep everyday resonance in India. At the Met Gala, that artistic language met the language of crochet.
This distinction matters. Calling the sculpture itself a handbag erases the relationship between the two objects. The bronze mango was the artwork. The Mango Jaal was the hand-engineered carrier around it - functional, visible and deliberately restrained.
A design that needed to support art without competing with it
Most handbags are designed to contain personal objects and assert an identity of their own. This project reversed that hierarchy. The crochet structure had to perform, but it could not become louder than the sculpture it carried.
That created a series of tensions. The form needed to be open but dependable, light in appearance but stable in use, and decorative enough to belong within a couture look without reading as extra ornament. Every visible line needed a reason to be there.
The final direction took the form of a lotus-inspired radial jaal: a net-like crochet structure that opened around the mango rather than enclosing it completely. The negative space was as important as the thread. It allowed the bronze surface to remain visible while giving the object a clear frame and a secure relationship with the hand.
The design intent was not to disguise the act of carrying. It was to make that act feel resolved. The bag had to acknowledge the weight and presence of the artwork, then visually step back.
Why crochet was the right medium
A conventional rigid case could have carried the sculpture, but it would have changed the relationship between object and hand. The bronze mango might have appeared enclosed, displayed or packaged. Crochet offered a different possibility: a structure that could remain visibly handmade, allow the artwork to be read through it and respond closely to the object it held.
The openness of the jaal was central to that decision. Because the sculpture remained exposed, its material, colour and recognisable form could stay present. The thread created boundaries without creating a solid wall. It gave the mango a place within the look while preserving the slight visual uncertainty that made viewers look twice.
Crochet also allowed the body and handle to be conceived as one connected system. The same material language could move from the radial cradle around the sculpture into the fine carrying element above it. Instead of attaching a standard metal frame or conventional chain to a textile pouch, the structure could be resolved through the behaviour of the thread itself.
This was custom couture in the most literal sense: not an existing bag resized for a celebrity appearance, but a form developed around one artwork, one styling brief and one moment. The result still belonged unmistakably to 3.10 by Guggi because it used the vocabulary we return to repeatedly - jaal, Indian references, integrated structure and the hand as an engineering tool.
Why real mangoes entered the studio
Before the final sculpture could be carried, the structure had to be tested against a three-dimensional object with the right general character. Real mangoes became the most useful prototypes available to us.
They were not used to imitate the artwork or predict every detail of the final piece. They were used to understand behaviour: scale, proportion, fall, fit and the way an open crochet form settled around a curved object. A drawing could suggest the outline, but it could not show how the jaal would respond once gravity, weight and movement entered the equation.
The tests helped us ask practical questions. Was the radial opening too wide or too tight? Did the form cradle the object or fight against it? Did the handle feel connected to the structure, or did it pull the jaal out of balance? Did the crochet frame the mango clearly enough without covering what made it recognisable?
This is the part of handmade development that is rarely visible in the final image. Sampling is not merely making the same object repeatedly. It is learning what the material is doing, altering the construction and testing again until the idea and the physical behaviour begin to agree.
The engineering hidden inside the delicacy
The Mango Jaal looked fine and almost weightless, but its delicacy depended on control. Open crochet exposes every decision: the spacing, the tension, the meeting points and the relationship between the body and the handle. There is little visual density in which an uneven repeat can disappear.
A fine, lustrous yarn was chosen for its strength, tensile stability and gold-like visual quality. The material needed to sit naturally within the metallic language of the complete look while remaining capable of holding a precise open form. The sheen also allowed the thread to relate to the bronze without trying to replicate it.
The handle was developed to feel almost chain-like. It needed to remain visually delicate, yet offer comfort, structure and strength. Its attachment could not be treated as an afterthought because the handle changed how the entire jaal responded when lifted. In a piece this open, the load travels visibly through the structure.
The repeated crochet lines therefore had to work together. Tension controlled the symmetry. The radial construction controlled the fit. The handle engineering controlled how the object was carried. The final effect appeared simple because the underlying decisions had been resolved.
THE CENTRAL CRAFT PRINCIPLE
The structure was created through crochet; it was not a decorative net placed over a hidden conventional bag. The thread, tension, spacing and handle were the engineering system.
From a Delhi studio to the Met steps
The journey from studio testing to the Met Gala was dramatic in scale, but the making remained intimate. The piece moved through the same vocabulary that defines 3.10 by Guggi: crochet, jaal, Indian references, patient sampling and the ability of the hand to solve a structural problem.
What changed was the brief. Instead of developing a bag around the usual requirements of a phone, cards or evening essentials, we were developing a carrier around an artwork with its own visual and cultural weight. The object determined the fit. The styling determined the degree of restraint. The carpet determined that the piece would be read from many distances, angles and images.
When Isha Ambani carried the completed Mango Jaal on the Met steps, the crochet did not announce its engineering. It simply held the artwork in the right place. That quiet performance was the point.
What the Mango Jaal proved about crochet
The project mattered to us because it expanded what a crochet bag could be asked to do. Crochet is often understood through softness, domestic making or familiar flat patterns. The Mango Jaal required it to behave as a fitted structural system in conversation with sculpture, couture and the body.
It also showed that handmade work does not need to become visually heavy in order to demonstrate skill. Sometimes the most difficult solution is the one that appears to do the least: a few controlled lines, an open field of space and a handle that seems almost effortless.
For 3.10 by Guggi, the commission was not a departure from our design language. It was a concentrated expression of it. Indian symbolism met contemporary form. Crochet carried weight without losing tactility. Sampling converted an unusual idea into a precise object. And the final bag became a frame through which art could be carried, rather than an accessory competing to be seen first.
Frequently asked questions
Who made Isha Ambani's mango bag at the 2026 Met Gala?
3.10 by Guggi created the custom hand-crocheted Mango Jaal carried by Isha Ambani. It was commissioned by stylist Anaita Shroff Adajania and designed to hold and frame a bronze mango sculpture by artist Subodh Gupta.
Was the mango at the Met Gala real?
No. The mango seen on the carpet was a bronze sculpture by Subodh Gupta. Real mangoes were used earlier in the development process to test the crochet structure's scale, fall and fit.
Was the sculpture itself the handbag?
No. The sculpture was the artwork being carried. The Mango Jaal was the custom crochet support structure around it. Keeping that distinction clear is essential to understanding the collaboration between art, styling and craft.
How did the Mango Jaal hold its shape?
Its form came from controlled yarn choice, stitch tension, radial spacing, handle attachment and repeated sampling. The open structure had to remain visually light while distributing the load through the crochet construction.
Is the Mango Jaal part of the regular collection?
No. The Mango Jaal was developed as a custom couture object and is not part of regular inventory.
A frame made by hand
The most memorable part of the Mango Jaal may be the surprise of seeing a mango on the Met Gala carpet. For us, its meaning lies in something quieter: the way a handmade structure can solve a precise problem without overwhelming the object it was created to carry.
It began with real mangoes on a worktable, moved through repeated tests of thread, shape and balance, and ended as a fine gold-like jaal around a bronze sculpture. The distance between those moments was crossed stitch by stitch. On the carpet, the structure receded and the artwork came forward. That was not the absence of design. It was the result of design doing exactly enough.