New Delhi, May 9 -- This is not the Anamika Khanna I met a few years ago. Back then, the Kolkata-based designer stuck to crisp one-line answers, and was uninterested in explaining herself. She preferred to let her work do all the talking.

The Anamika Khanna sitting before me this Friday afternoon, a few weeks before heading to New York to style Isha Ambani for the Met Gala, is chatty without oversharing. The collar of her oversized white shirt is up, her black trousers are tailored like a salwar, and the whole look is complemented by killer heels, blow-dried black hair and freshly manicured red-gel nails. It's this effortless feminine-yet-androgynous personal style that extends to her work.

"This is AK 2.0," says Khanna, the force behin...