Narendra Kumar ornery as most people know him is one of the most influential people in the world of men's fashion in today's day and age he's been voted as one of the top 50 menswear designers and today he's heading the creative aspect of the entire vertical called Amazon fashion he's interacted with Jeff Bezos and Jeff Bezos is just one of the million successful people that this man has interacted with he's learned from all of them he's a crazily voracious reader this conversation of the Remigio is going to add a lot of information into your mind
we're also gonna touch upon what makes a human being more attractive and you know what more than the information there's a lot of classiness to be gained from this man so without further ado enjoy Narendra Kumar on the red meat show one of the best things about my own career one of my biggest blessings is that this youtuber / entrepreneur tag opens up a lot of doors I'm very fortunate to have met marine the Kumar pleasure nari there are proud to call you somewhat of a mentor to me glad to be one proud to also
I didn't know that but glad to be well you are proud to also know you as a fellow I'd like to call it Bachelor right you are in a relationship but you're on unmarried 49 year old person yeah and you don't see that a lot in India you don't see the that's my choice yeah that's my choice some of our most interesting conversations have been about relationships about a partying right but also about how you've landed the country's most desired creative job right you're the head of creatives for Amazon fashion for Amazon I'm glad to
be there nice to be there from the very beginning and you're considered one of the world's top 50 fashion designers menswear designers and you're talking to menswear you do so absolutely we're gonna be tackling all these topics through this podcast yeah look forward to it go for it so I'm gonna ask you man how did you go from being an everyday average sports playing ba maked to being up there yes I mean a long journey I mean you know I was really not that great at studies and education was really not my forte I did
I didn't do so great when it came to my university really did badly actually passed by copying I have to say that right now but I think and I was quite lost for many years until I really found my calling when I was 26 27 what I do from 21 to 26 my first job was selling photocopies at 10 percent 15 by some office to office in Norman point were you that guy in the Xerox shop yeah exactly yeah pack that and gave it to people and then I think my parents felt a little bad
for me and they said I should get you gave me a more respectable job kind of stuff and I got a job selling glass bottles like milk bottles and I did that for about five six years and then I heard this school NIFT National Institute of Fashion Technology opening up and they looked for 1 years they looked for either a first class in graduation or a years experience in the industry I had neither and so I couldn't job the day I got to know about it and life took on from then you always like clothes
you like fashion I did I I mean I I did like fashion from the very beginning I remember the first time maybe I was in my 10th standard or so I used to alter my clothes my own clothes for the fit and the shape I used to use my mother's hand sewing machine to play around with the shapes and fits of clothing but then they were note school real schools too for boys to learn fashion in you know the only girls schools and fashion was not considered a career for boys at that time here how
do you climb up the ranks how do you become one of the world's 50 top fashion designers I tell myself then I think to put it simply is I tell myself I told myself when I finished fashion school that I should be the bet I just kept the bar really high so I said to myself I should be the best in the world and nothing less but I also knew that it was a very difficult task for menswear designer for a designer in India to fish on to the top kind of stuff and but what
I did is put my head down and work at it every Ingle day of my life every single day of my career I looked at creating the best that I could always fascinated by something nice that I would do it would be something that would lift me to such great heights and take me pass all my depression all your depression all my depression take us through that there's a lot of you know depressions always been around yeah but it's just that because of social media and the modern day it's been highlighted a lot more by
yes yeah it's highlighted more and is seen as a disease yeah bird you know I don't know if it is true and I'm not qualified to say if it's a disease or not but I look at both the high and low the depression for being that inspired me that drove me every day it was a teacher you know it was a teacher actually from the age of it was not just a teacher I think it is a lesson learnt in life very much early that my parents took me to these lectures by Krishnamurti J Krishnamurti
and that's where I got of understanding that you know you're really not much in control of what is going to happen to your life the only thing you can do is leave it you know of course you can plan it but your plans might not go the way you want to and so it allowed me to deal with the highs and the lows in the same manner and therefore both the high and the low were inspiring and I've created great shows ideas from being depressed and also from being high like could you give an example
of something you learned from J Krishnamurti that stayed with you I mean I think that that there is no great Authority in life a God kind of spirit it is about how you deal with everyday life when how you look at life everyday and how you deal with your next person the person you meet and really that is where apparently the godliness comes in is how you deal with the next person you meet more the people you see and that to me has really been a driving idea through my career and through my life also
with successful people especially people like you who've done different things and been successful in different things and show you how like this core formula that you follow you know like okay work hard yeah keep learning about this industry absolutely and maybe that X Factor yeah the X Factor was just you know if I were to describe my life I mean that X Factor would be no rearview you know I've always wanted to expand on every aspect of what I do and when I did fashion I also taught in fashion school I was also a fashion
journalist I've done photography I told myself that I should be trained in every aspect of that function or that career you know most people just become designers and just remain designers for 30 40 years in their lives I couldn't do that I wanted to know every aspect of design from styling I don't know if you guys know we style India's most seminal film on fashion called fashion yeah with Priyanka and Kangana and Mukta and people and so I I had this need to know every aspect of the work that I was doing so it never
made what it did was you kept me independent at least had a top view maybe I didn't do everything at the same time but at least I knew what I wanted and probably that's what really helped me bring these things and I used all of them and everything I tell myself that everything that I have learned through my life has always been helpful because somewhere or the other it has come it has been of help whether it is my personal life or how I see it or how I execute my ideas they say knowledge is
never wasted it isn't absolutely agree and all knowledge is great knowledge you also someone who reads a lot I do I know you as a person and you're the kind of person who reads again to add layers to their mind absolutely I mean I I think there are reading is a way of understanding how other people think and you know to grow yourself you relate to other people and therefore without understanding them it becomes difficult to relate to people this don't life yeah you know with my generation a lot of people don't read right but
there are people are hungry for knowledge so things like this podcast have betrayed our versions of books right so I think the difference between books and what does is that books you go and you scan the subconscious mind and the conscious mind of the writer the very author right but with podcasts you're getting a larger quantity of information that's spread out you're not doing as deep you're getting a lot so I read multiple books at the same time I read five six different books on different subjects you know and I recently saw in apparently a
documentary film on how you expand your brain how your neurons fire when you're doing multiple things as opposed to doing just a single thing you know it has happened all along and this was just a confirmation but it's not like I would read a book from page one to page two the last page I mean I go back to books in different stages and the most important thing is picking out the essence of the book because you know the author has spent a lot of time qualifying that thought there is a single line if you
could collapse a book into five lines that is really the sense of the book you know and to me always yeah more important than what somebody has done in their lives like artists for instance it was always important to me to understand how they grew up yeah what their influences were and how did they think because for me it gives me a way to adapt that thought process into my own world instead of just repeating what they have done physically and convert it into my world so it gives me a deeper method of thinking I
was always are interested by the method of the thought rather than one final thought in itself Wow beautiful so straight off the top of your head three books are like life-changing for you you know different books of influence be in different n different I think number one was Krishna move his book the awakening of intelligence Jai Krishna Krishna moves his book of awakening of intelligence and the other book was the atheist guide to reality living life without illusions by Alex Rosenberg which is absolutely a fantastic fantastic view of why we are here as human beings
on this earth and what is the purpose that we did and it says there is no real purpose to our lives but since we are here we should make the most of it yeah and I think the third one is called the antidote by Oliver Bookman and that talks about for those four people who and the byline says for people who hate positive thinking and I think it's a real great view because positive thinking was created in the sixth in the 50s and 60s in America for people to get over the war and depression and
live in the future in a skip what they were living then you know today if you look at the Millennials and Gen Z everybody wants leave the moment hmm you know this positive thinking of like oh I want to live what I'm going to live 20 years from now live and believe that I am going to work towards that I don't know how relevant it is today in today's world I think it's coming back it's making he would come back so I I think that you know contrary I feel that you know positive thinking he's
in today's world people want to live today more than today and you look at and that's the reason why everybody has 15 different things that they do don't last in a job for six months or eight months you know so people are finding just searching for what makes them happy and sometimes small things don't make them happy you know positive thinking is just live like you are happy today yeah yeah and it might not be there but just live about think about it today you're living in the future and you really don't want to do
that and for most young people I know they want to do things now because there is lots to do why do you not get married to all this I think that marriage is signing a paper is never a important issue for me it was commitment and commitment is what is really important commitment to your work commitment to your partner commit to all of that those are important things you know and in a paper does not qualify that yeah I have been through a lot in my life and I have been through I have been with
partners which are really long I have a partner for many years now all of that kind of stuff and and business partner work partner all of that kind of stuff and I think that it is commitment that is really the most important thing you know you could have signed that paper and not be committed to yeah so for me I I never looked at it as an important aspect like but did you see marriages feel around you as well like your friends and things like that but I would still not use that as a qualification
as to why I never got married but I heard from an external posted perspective I an observer why I think the pressures are lot expectations a lot today I may yeah because you know you were open today to so many influences that were never there before in your life your example I mean people that you meet careers that you want travel that you want to do and it's difficult to find people with both the same level of expectations and somebody who would probably encourage you in your own journey you know and a lot of people
look within themselves rather than look to others to help others and put people out and I think that the pressure is a lot more yeah there are a lot more things to do a lot more things to achieve and unless you have this commitment of taking each other along or multiple people along it finds it very difficult to get through a long relationship and have you seen any successful long relation of course I have my parents were married for the longest time ever who write my I mean I think that they committed and respected each
other they knew that each one qualified their lives they were friends first before they got married more than anything else I mean it's not to say that you have not to be friends do you you can be stranger than you can get together you can explore and you can find out in the journey as you get along and that itself is a great thing you know so there are lots of successful people but you also hear of a lot of things that go awry when it comes to relationships and marriages and I'm no judge for
this what advice do you have for people in their twenties both in terms of relationships and work I think that relationships can nurture you a lot and can destroy you also yeah you need to be able to be you need to be mindful of what relationships are and how it is nurturing you I mean nurturing cannot be selfish cannot be just about you it also depends on how you nurture the other person because that is what is the nourishing relationship where you can nurture each other in the ways that you want to do as far
as careers are concerned you know today there has never been a time like this over the last 200 years of our Industrial Revolution you know we learned today our parents learn today from generation to generation they grew up their parents taught them their father taught them do the values and they spoke about careers to their children you know and they said you mean 100 years or 50 years ago if someone said you were better at don't dr. bond job because that is great for you in life you did it because that was the choice today
I think the other real important thing is how health has improved over life earlier people told you generation in the past people told you that you have to do and build your career from the age of say 21 22 to 60 and then you were retired you know and then you had to save for the next part of your life the age in the future is not going to be limited to 60 you know people are already living till eighties in another 20 years they will live out till 100 and you probably will have to
work until you're 80 and you will be in good health and good you know kind of stuff because all of that is improving healthcare is improving life is improving standards are improving for everybody you know so people will live longer and in in that situation how do you measure your life you know do you want to become a CEO by in 15 years of your within 15 years of your career do you want to be an entrepreneur what do you want to be because what do you do after that you know there are not millions
and millions of CEOs there are only a limited amount of jobs that go with that you know how do you maintain or sustain your interest in one thing or the next 40 50 60 years is a difficult thing also for people you know so that's where people need to think you know I would say that it is a steady climb instead of a vertical climb and comes to careers I think that as you build your career you got to know today every aspect of your career you know I mean you cannot be just a a
master of one you need to be a master of one which is the basis of your career but you need to be a jack of all other stuff because today's the age of the entrepreneur and to be an entrepreneur you need to know something about everything yeah you also you work with a lot of young people in your Amazon team right I'm sure in your hiring process you're hiring people with that little kind of mentality of you look for certain things right what do you look for in that hot prospect I think that you know
looking for people in is you're looking at a place where you think about the new work culture you think about Millennials and how they work how you going to foster how you going to help them how you going to nurture them into their careers and the kind of backgrounds they come with you know are you a free thinker are you independent do you follow processes how do you structure your thought process and how widely you think yeah and for me that is the most important thing and some of the questions I asked people at interviews
is what's the top of their playlist music list currently you know and or what are the three top books you're reading currently it's kind of stuff I mean not religion anything to do with the actual job but rather of their minds Minds you know to me that is really the essence of the person because I know if you have your favorite music so who's your favorite musician you know maybe a band Pearl Jam you know and for me what is important is what do you know about them how do you follow what you love and
to me that gives me a perspective of how the person thinks about what they - because if you are really thorough about what you love you know it could be anything you know it could be music it could be vine it could be he could be traveling it could be cause it could be any single kind how deeply you get into it allows me to give a possible allows me the perspective of the person as being someone who is thorough in what they love and so definitely they should be thoroughly in what they do so
you're a really good guy and though your curio is gone it is a relative term to use like you seem like a really nice person so amp you I'm sure you like you know you've gone really fast in your career you've gone way ahead of a lot of people right and I'm sure you've seen people who don't capitalize on their moment right what if those people done wrong you know the ones who've not reached where there was a whole story I mean I think that that's a lesson in life that I have learned you know
I used to also be like this person racing ahead doing the next thing and the next thing and the next thing I couldn't stop myself and then I realized that I was just creating these ideas of next thing where everybody else was benefiting from it profiting from the idea yeah and I also told myself I need to do the next thing but I need to be able to make the most of the things that I'm talking about develop it further develop it a little deeper and layer it with the new things you know and and
that is really important I mean a simple example would be I'll do shows and my shows I would have like 30 different ideas in one show yeah and I realized that you know I was doing 30 different ideas but there were other people who are taking my one idea and building empires and businesses out for themselves and I decided that's when I realized that I needed to slow down I needed to be able to put this out in a way that was digestible and I could take ownership of it so they say that the curse
of creativity is being slightly ungrounded in terms of if you're born with a lot of creativity you're also born with a slight lack of stability right I see stability is good because it keeps that h of learning it allows you to build but you don't have you know you don't have to go over the top I mean I don't believe in this fantasy idea of you know you need to take drugs to be creative you know you don't have to be wallowing in drugs all the time to be create this kind of creative person I
never felt the need for that in my life ever Bert is kept a hunger on I mean for me it's what are the new ideas that are firing my brain you know what is the new is the hunger to learn that really keeps firing and and I think that's what careers are about I mean for creative people also you can be a straightjacket straightjacket person but you can be terribly terribly creative yeah in what do you think and you know a lot of research shows that you need to be a little crazy to survive odd
I would twist seals song and I say you need to be a little crazy to be creative the craziness comes not from your demeanor or your personality the craziness comes craziness comes from your hunger to learn more yeah and sometimes people don't see that what's up couriers because you're someone who's worked in multiple industries right what what subcarriers I think relationships and how you deal with no I mean not personal intimate are not family relationships but I think interpersonal relationships is really important how you deal with the other person as your co-workers yeah and I
think that you know failing is not a bad thing in life you know as long as you learn from it yeah and no we only hear about the success story we don't hear about failures but you know big people have also failed in life you know Steve Jobs were thrown out over the job that he could that he created but he came back to be successful and there are many stories like that there are great people who have done great stuff and looking down upon failure is a is probably not the right thing that we
have learnt now that is not the right thing it is something this is a part of the journey because you don't know the downsides of everything you learn a lot from it so it's important you know to to learn from your failings and grow from it yeah you know you're also someone who's spoken to Jeff Bezos like add that kind of a leadership position at Amazon right what's it like hanging out with him what made him the world's richest person and what's his mentality that's trickle down all the leaders of the Amazon organization I think
I mean I will qualify it by a little a little story of my interview and I interviewed with many people in Amazon including the global expansion head and people in the US and teams across and you know peep in finally I was asked so you know you're a famous designer you design for mr. Bachchan Bollywood Shahrukh everyone you've done this fashion film why do you want why would you want to work with Amazon you know I think my my answer then really was qualifies what he was saying is what that organization believes in was as
a creator director I I was I told him how many people get a chance to change the way a billion people live yeah it's the perspective of your job is the vision that you have for the role that you are playing in that company always have a large vision vision beyond what most people cannot comprehend you know and that's what really is Amazon Amazon is this single person's vision along working of course along the working with the whole team of people over many years or having a vision that was 20 years long yeah but working
at it every day with processes structure analysis everything in place you know in Amazon there's a great saying it's always day one Wow yeah day one and we still live day one every day yeah and and I think that that is the greatness of that organization that it is mentee he had a vision which started from a book doing him to such a large place today in the world for what was what book was selling books basically oh okay Amazon began as a books a book company right so and that and you can see that
creativity you can see that energy amongst the team members everyone in the team is as energized when they think talk about stuff like this but on a human level what was in Jeff Bezos that took him that fight was the same thing nobody I I think it was won the vision of course and the fact that you know there was value for people who worked with him sharing an understanding value and building good structure where a sense of value was appreciated by everybody and and the very fact that everybody had a voice hmm and it
would be heard you know from the lowest in the team to the highest in the team this is something you know great about Amazon is if somebody even at the lowest level asks you a question you're obliged to answer and answer with respect mmm you know you cannot just say okay shoo this is my aunts and just go you need to qualify everything you did you answer and I have learnt a lot being there I have learned a lot being there understanding the thought process and the openness then the organization is doing so yeah I
mean I think that's what's trickle down from him it was from whatever you've told me about him I feel like even he's that kind of guy who takes opinions who takes other people's opinions despite being the world's richest person right and I think that's what's a great attribute to have as a person what's it like being the same room as a meze like a rapid thing go you know I I think he's like I don't ordinarily like you and me talking understanding probing and getting a better understanding of the place that's I mean um that's
what like any other person doesn't want to get even richer like is that I don't I think he wants to do more I mean richer is what is money at some point you know I just after a certain point I think the like I come back to the fact that it's hungry to do more mmm which is amazing that's crazy you have no competition you have only your own glass ceiling to break right so how do you keep stay motivated at that level hunger to do stuff Wow without any reference for absolutely Oh mr. nariño
Kumar thank you again lovely joke to you yeah I've learned a lot from you endo hopefully you'll be a better man seriously I mean like talking to you sometimes gets a little heavy in a very positive way so I always I would say that comes with age ya know where we're hungry for this kind of information these kind of experiences because young people are aging faster than they used to before and I think that's re growing up hahaha I think it's one ageing and growing up is one of the most beautiful things and this looking
to someone who's been there done it and is doing it still and is continuously growing is one of the best aspects of growing up I mean I learn every day so for me this is learning also yeah so anyway guys I'm gonna be linking nice handles down below so make sure you check it out in the description box make sure you give them a follow and make sure you give this episode and we show a like share it with your friends and until next time from mrs. Murray in the Kumar well done thank you so
much and pleasure being here likewise I mean pleasure being on my own show from McCann 100 we will see you later from the Ranbir show oh this is the renovation show yes is that what I was talking cancel everything delete delete delete thank you
