From First-Year Curiosity to a Designer’s Chair at Mix Bunch: How Khushi Dehade Turned Four Years of Portfolio Work at Parul Institute of Design Into a Fashion Designer Role!

A fashion placement is rarely won in the interview room. It is won in the months of portfolio work that come before it, in the projects a student chooses to perfect, and in the slow build of confidence that lets a designer explain why they made the choices they did.

Khushi Dehade’s route to a Fashion Designer role at , a menswear brand, is a clear illustration of that. By the time she sat for the recruitment process, the work had already been done.

Khushi is a Fashion Design student in the 2022 to 2026 batch at Parul Institute of Design, part of the Faculty of Design at Parul University. Her placement at Mix Bunch is the first chapter of her professional life in the industry, and it did not arrive by accident. It was the product of a deliberate, years-long approach to building the one thing that matters most in a designer’s early career: a portfolio that speaks for itself.

This is one of several documented fashion outcomes from Parul Institute of Design. A companion piece follows Dipali Gupta from an Anusha J Couture internship into a production role at Zebein, and a third covers how fashion internships at firms like Shahi Exports and Sajnaari build industry readiness.

The interior design side of the faculty is covered through Priyanka Soni’s placement at Livspace. The broader institutional placement record is at Parul University’s placement record for the 2026 placement season.

The curiosity began in her first year, when garment making, textile design, and fashion illustration pulled her attention in a way that felt less like coursework and more like discovery. That early pull matters because the students who build strong portfolios tend to be the ones who started treating the work as their own well before anyone required them to. For Khushi, the four years that followed were a steady widening of that first interest into a professional skill set.

Alongside the core curriculum, she pursued the things that do not show up on a transcript but decide a career: design contests, workshops, online certifications, and internships in apparel design and styling. Each one closed a little of the gap between what a classroom teaches and what a fashion house actually needs. The projects she took on, spanning sustainable clothing collections, ethnic wear, and fashion illustration, gave her exposure to the full design process from research and inspiration through concept development, fabric selection, prototyping, and final presentation.

Khushi started preparing for placement almost a year before the recruitment season, which is the single most important decision in her story. She understood that the fashion industry is competitive and that a portfolio is the currency a young designer trades on. So she treated portfolio building as a priority rather than a last-minute scramble, continuously updating it with her strongest projects and refining each one until it reflected her design thinking clearly.

The harder part was not the sketching. It was learning to talk about work. She has been candid that early on, presenting her designs during portfolio reviews and interviews made her uncomfortable. That is a common and underrated obstacle for design students, whose talent is visual but whose placement depends on articulation. With preparation and mentorship from faculty, she learned to present herself, explain her inspirations, and defend her design decisions, which is precisely the skill the recruitment process would go on to test.

The selection at Mix Bunch ran across three rounds, each testing a different dimension of whether a candidate can actually do the job rather than just claim to.

• Portfolio evaluation. The first round put her college projects, designs, and techniques in front of the recruiters and gave her the chance to explain the inspiration, research, and execution behind each piece. This is where the year of portfolio discipline paid off directly.
• Design assessment round. The second round tested creative approach, problem-solving, and command of fashion design principles. She was questioned on design inspirations, concept development, fabric selection, and how she handles design challenges, and asked to demonstrate that she could turn an idea into a practical solution.
• HR interview – The final round moved to career goals, strengths, and professional attitude, covering teamwork, communication, and adaptability. It was as much about whether she would fit the team as whether she could design, and it let her show enthusiasm alongside competence.

The offer that followed was the payoff of the whole approach. What is worth noticing is that nothing in the three rounds could have been crammed for in the final week. Each round tested something she had been building for years, which is exactly why the early, consistent preparation mattered more than any single interview answer.

Khushi’s own advice to juniors is worth repeating because it is specific rather than generic. Start preparing for placements early and stay consistent. Treat the portfolio as the thing that reflects your creativity and ability, and keep refining it. Participate in fashion competitions, workshops, internships, and industry events, because each one adds practical skills and something to show. Stay current on trends, market shifts, technology, and sustainable fashion. And build the confidence to believe in your own work, because that confidence is what carries a candidate through interviews.

This maps directly onto how the Fashion Design programme at Parul Institute of Design is structured, with academic projects, competitions, workshops, and the annual Fashion Week graduating showcase all functioning as portfolio-building opportunities. For a student who uses them the way Khushi did, the programme becomes a four-year runway toward exactly the kind of outcome she achieved.

Fashion is one discipline within the Faculty of Design at Parul University, which sits inside an institution holding NAAC A++ accreditation at CGPA 3.55 and Category 1 status with Grant of Graded Autonomy. The design programmes are supported by the same infrastructure that backs the university’s broader placement strength, recognised by ASSOCHAM as the Best University in Placements for three consecutive years, with 2,200+ recruiting companies engaging across disciplines.

For fashion and design students in particular, placement is only one of the paths the institution supports. For those who would rather build their own label or venture than join an existing brand, PIERC, the Parul Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre, provides the incubation route, having supported 254 startups, including consumer and lifestyle brands. The point for a design student is that the ambition, whether it is a designer’s chair at an established house or a brand of one’s own, has a supported path behind it. Khushi chose the first, and the programme carried her to it.