Most footwear treats monsoon as something to survive, temporarily or otherwise. Barkha, our monsoon collection, treats it as a design and utility brief. Every material choice in it — the webbing, the footbed, and the sole — answers to one condition: what happens when the ground is wet and the day doesn't stop, and comfort and style aren't supposed to be a trade-off.
This edit looks at the Barkha collection, which includes Sko, Varsha and Namii for her, and Var, Sko and Tro for him. What follows is less a buying guide than an explanation of how each pair is made for a different version of a day, and what cork is doing across all of them.
Why cork, not rubber
Rubber is the obvious monsoon material, and also the wrong one for daily wear. It doesn't breathe, it holds odour, and it stiffens in the cold. Leather stains and takes days to dry. Cork does neither, and it's the collection's hero material for structural reasons, not just seasonal ones. The same footbed that handles a flooded street in July works just as well in December.
The cork here is rubberised: a compound of natural cork and natural rubber, pressed into footbed sheets of different thicknesses. It holds its shape, resists water without sealing it in artificially, and takes colour through pigmentation rather than a surface coating, which is why the footbed comes in its own small palette of greys, blacks, browns, and mochas, independent of whatever colour sits on the strap above it.
The webbing follows the same logic on performance: instead of absorbing water and drying slowly the way untreated fabric does, it's a high-tensile polyester weave with a hydrophobic coating that repels moisture, keeping the strap lightweight and structurally sound even when fully wet, and drying quickly rather than holding onto rot or odour. It's also colour-fast without fading, which is where Varsha and Var's colours actually live — on the strap, not the footbed.
For her: Sko, Varsha and Namii
Sko 2.0 is the collection's most neutral shape — a crossover silhouette on a rubberised cork footbed, with water-friendly webbing straps fastened by an adjustable hook-and-loop closure. It's the pair for a day with no particular plan: commute, errands, an evening that might involve standing in line for an autorickshaw.
Varsha is the more technical of the three. Its dual-strap design sits on a rubberised arch-support cork footbed — currently the only coloured arch-support cork footbed of its kind in India, with the same water-friendly webbing at the straps and a hook-and-loop closure. It's the pair for longer days on foot, where the extra structure under the arch earns its weight.
Namii is the outlier, materially and stylistically. Its T-strap upper is polyester fabric with a PVC backing — water-friendly like the rest of the collection, but a sealed build rather than a woven one, easy to move from errands to evenings out. Paired with an elastic strap for an easy, stretch fit and the same cork footbed as Sko, it's the pair for a day that's about more than just a wet pavement.
For him: Var, Sko and Tro
Var shares its construction with Varsha: dual-strap, arch-support cork footbed, water-friendly webbing and hook-and-loop closure. The name comes from Varsha: rain — and it's the men's line's answer to a full day of walking rather than a short commute.
Sko 2.0 mirrors our bestseller of the past six years — a crossover silhouette, cork footbed, and the same webbing widths. Tro 2.0 carries the same footbed and webbing widths as Sko, the difference comes down to the name and an extra strap, added for style rather than function.
Choosing between them
The five styles solve three different problems, not three different aesthetics.
• For a day with no specific plan, Sko — men's or women's — is the default: the lightest, most neutral option in the collection.
• For a day spent mostly on your feet, Var or Varsha's arch-support footbed earns its extra structure.
• For a day where the plan keeps shifting — errands into evening — Namii's versatile T-strap is made for it.
Living with cork through the season
Cork asks for less upkeep than most monsoon materials. Wipe the footbed down after a wet day, let it air dry away from direct heat, and the rubberised compound holds its shape and colour through repeated wear rather than cracking or fading. The same habit works whether the sandals see three months of rain or twelve.
None of this is really about monsoon. It's about a material that happens to handle rain well, in a collection meant to be worn long after the season ends.
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