NEW DELHI — In a stifling office on the second floor of an anonymous building along a dusty lane in Lado Sarai — the new hub for young artists in a corner of the southwestern part of this capital city — a 38-year-old men’s wear designer Vogue.com has called a “global fashion superstar in the making” sat in semidarkness.

The power had gone out. Somehow the power is always going out in 21st-century India, a nation with 1.25 billion people, thousands of years of recorded history and the capacity to deploy nuclear weaponry.

India is a paradoxical country. And Suket Dhir is a paradoxical guy. Born in Banga, India, he is an unshorn and unshaven Punjabi Hindu who styles himself a “wannabe Sikh”; a self-described former “slacker” now blissfully married to a Russian-Indian woman, Svetlana Dhir, who manages the business; a creative talent eager to compete on the global stage, and yet one who shares his small studio office with his elderly father.

He is also an expert craftsman whose subtle tailoring was recognized last January with one of the most prestigious honors in fashion, the International Woolmark Prize, an award that has also gone to Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent.