India, Dec. 5 -- Before getting into crafting fantastical corsets out of cloth and resin, Shiv Pandey was content styling his twin sister, quietly dreaming of making it big in fashion without quite knowing where to begin. A failed attempt at the NIFT entrance exam ("I was so bad at math," he laughs) pushed him onto a different path: a degree in English literature by day, and freelance work as a makeup artist by night. Every rupee Shiv earned was carefully saved until he could finally fund a label of his own. That dream became reality last year with the launch of Museum of What.

The label is best known for its gravity-defying corsets, constructed from cloth and resin, a viscous material that hardens into durable, sculptural form. Often di...