Multi-hyphenate designer and creative director Ikshit Pande's New Delhi and New York-based streetwear label QUOD — short for the Latin phrase 'quod erat demonstrandum', meaning 'proving which was to be demonstrated' — has always been the avant-garde of India's street fashion movement. Writing about QUOD's 'Wonderland' series for Homegrown in 2022, Meghna Mathew wrote: The Wonderland series brings to fore all that QUOD is — fearless, proud, and for everyone, the way they want it. It artistically puts forth the label and its intention and we're here for it!

Four years later, QUOD is marking its sixth anniversary with 'Homecoming' — a short film that blurs the lines between fashion campaign, visual poetry, and emotional memoir. Directed by BAFTA Student Award-nominated filmmaker Neel Soni (Babli by Night, 2025), the film is set amidst the snow-capped hills of Kumaon and marks a deeply personal return to his roots for Ikshit Pande, who grew up in Nainital.

Homecoming is more than just a nostalgic return to Pande's childhood home — it's a visual meditation on memory, childlike vulnerability, and the feeling of truly being oneself. The film reimagines fragments of Pande's childhood — like hand-knit sweaters, glimmering tiger eyes in the dark, and icy staircases on school mornings, weaving them into a dreamlike vision.

Grounded in this homegrown ethos, QUOD's Homecoming collection signals a shift away from spectacle toward introspection. "For me, home is not a place but a state of mind — unguarded, wild, honest," Pande says. And that is what he has always tried to make QUOD stand for: a place for people across the world to feel like themselves again.