When a ₹40 Can Became a Canvas — The Story of HUEMN x Pepsi

©HUEMN x Pepsi

Pranav Misra is a poet who makes clothes. And in December 2022, he put the same portraits from his ₹11,500 Diversity hoodies onto a ₹40 Pepsi can. Unchanged. No simplification. No mass market adaptation. The actual design on an entirely different canvas.

That’s the collaboration that’s been living rent-free in my head ever since I came across it. Not because it was a big campaign with massive media spend. But because of what it represents about how two brands with completely different scales can come together without one consuming the other.

To understand why this matters, you have to start with HUEMN who they are, what they’ve been building since 2012, and why the Diversity collection isn’t just a product line. It’s the soul of the brand.

A Poet From Lucknow Who Didn’t Know Fashion

Pranav Misra grew up in Lucknow. Not Delhi, not Mumbai. He came to fashion sideways through NIFT Bengaluru, through poetry, through an obsessive attention to people and their stories. He and Shyma Shetty launched HUEMN in 2012 in Delhi, at a time when Indian fashion was dominated by bridal wear and feminine western occasion wear.

The clothes they wanted to make didn’t have a market yet. Stylists didn’t know where to place them. The aesthetic was androgynous, minimalist, conversational completely at odds with what was moving in Indian retail at the time.

Pranav described it himself: “I grew up in Lucknow, which was unrelated to Delhi or Bombay, particularly in terms of fashion. I’m a complete outsider, the lens in which I view the industry is completely different. I don’t place a high value on clothing it’s almost like another layer of skin. I’m more invested in people, their narratives, and the stories in the background.”

So they built their own market. By 2015, HUEMN had found its voice experimenting with brand communication directed at youth, a demographic that wasn’t even considered commercially viable for premium fashion in India then. Their Fall/Winter 2015 campaign didn’t use models at all. It featured bare bodies of “real” people holding up the clothes instead of wearing them. The point: diversity in representation over the industry’s narrow definition of beauty.

This wasn’t a one-off. It was a direction and it only got more deliberate from there.

At Lakmé Fashion Week 2017, they showcased an installation of human bodies wrapped in clothing and plastic bags designed to conjure the image of a landfill, raising questions about fashion waste. Their Spring/Summer 2019 collection paid homage to Kashmir: camouflage prints symbolising upheaval, models walking with covered faces and tied hands. The 2020 News collection was a non-gender t-shirt range reacting to fake news and blind consumerism. Clothing as commentary, every single season.

Pranav describes HUEMN as a “progressive sceptic” brand. What he means: they’re creating an archive of our times. Not chasing trends. Not building for the next quarter. Building something that, in his words, “when people look back a century from now, will offer a clear understanding of the times we currently live in”

The Diversity Collection HUEMN’s Most Powerful IP

At the centre of everything HUEMN does is one simple, radical idea: diversity isn’t the topic. It’s the foundation.

The name itself encodes it. HUEMN a wordplay on “human” Hue stands for colour, representing how different we all are from each other. From day one, Pranav believed in personalities over models. Role models over runway models. People who inspire you regardless of gender, caste, religion, or geography.

The Diversity collection is the physical expression of this. Hand-drawn portraits. Different skin tones, ages, features, expressions. Each face unique, each one drawn individually. Water-based screen printing — not factory output, but handcraft. The technique matters: it means no two pieces are exactly alike, which is the point. The design communicates what the brand believes at a molecular level.

The hoodie retails at ₹11,500. Positioned in the premium streetwear segment. The brand retails across India, Middle East, China, Japan, Europe, and the Americas. Their customer base, in Pranav’s own words, consists of tastemakers.

Shyma Shetty put their design philosophy directly: “Any form of art should provoke discomfort. It has to inspire thought, arouse a reaction, initiate conversation.” Their clothes do that. They’re not meant to be passive purchases. They’re meant to put something on your chest that demands a response.

This is why the Diversity collection is HUEMN’s most successful IP. It’s not just a product it’s the brand’s entire belief system made wearable.

The Pepsi Relationship — And the Flip

The 2022 collaboration wasn’t the first time HUEMN worked with Pepsi. That matters for understanding what made the second one significant.

2019 — First Collaboration HUEMN showcased at Lotus Makeup India Fashion Week. The collection reimagined Pepsi’s classic logo for androgynous casual wear. Tracksuits, double denim, boxy jackets, flannel shirts. Graphic vintage feel. The denim was made from recycled ocean plastics. Direction: Pepsi’s IP on HUEMN’s product.

December 2022 — Second Collaboration Mukesh Mills, Mumbai. Sara Ali Khan as showstopper. Marking HUEMN’s tenth anniversary. Limited-edition cans released alongside a clothing collection. Direction: HUEMN’s IP on Pepsi’s product.

That flip is the whole story. In 2019, Pepsi was the content. In 2022, HUEMN was the content. Same partnership, completely inverted dynamic.

Pranav described it in an interview with ELLE: “The earlier association was more in terms of making a line with Pepsi. But this time they’ve aligned with us in the partner capacity, as someone who also believes in our vision. Although we’ve taken a couple of their IPs and developed products around them — it is essentially a new HUEMN collection.”

That last line is the key. Not “a Pepsi collaboration” A new HUEMN collection, that happened to involve Pepsi.

The Can — What the Design Actually Says

The limited-edition Pepsi Black x HUEMN cans are where the whole thing crystallises.

Black matte finish. White line-drawn faces covering the surface from top to bottom. Faces of different people — different ages, features, expressions, hairstyles. The portraits overlapping and standing alone at turns, creating visual rhythm on a curved aluminum surface. The HUEMN logo sits understated at the bottom, below the Pepsi wordmark.

These are the same portraits from the Diversity hoodies. Not a simpler version. Not an adaptation made more approachable for mass consumption. The exact design, transferred onto packaging. Same intricate continuous line work. Same raw, sketchbook like quality that defines HUEMN’s visual language.

There was one constraint: standard product description requirements and fixed placement zones for regulatory text. HUEMN and Pepsi’s teams dealt with it through prototyping. Multiple rounds before arriving at the final product. Getting the raw, hand-drawn aesthetic to work on aluminum without losing the design’s identity.

When asked to describe the can design in three words, Pranav said: “Iconic. Diversity. Huemn” Not “Pepsi” Not even “collaboration” Huemn.

Pranav spoke about what drove it: “The fact that a single product touches so many lives from such diverse backgrounds and is equally relevant is why the partnership was exciting for me. Our commitment to dialogue around diversity is not just in the foundation of our company but also in its name.”

Saumya Rathor, Category Lead at Pepsi Cola, PepsiCo India, framed Pepsi’s side clearly: “This new generation is armed with swag and an inherent confidence in their own abilities. They are not afraid to express themselves and fashion has always been an important tool through which they can express their identities. Our collaboration with HUEMN is our commitment to celebrate this very philosophy.”

Two different ways of saying the same thing. Pepsi reaching toward a generation that values authentic expression. HUEMN wanting their design to be held by a wider section of society. The collaboration worked because both brands were solving the same problem from different angles.

What This Actually Means For Brand Collaboration

Most brand collaborations follow a predictable logic: take the more famous brand’s visual identity, apply it to the less famous brand’s product category, create a limited run, generate buzz. The output is almost always a diluted version of what both brands stand for individually.

That’s not what happened here.

HUEMN didn’t give Pepsi a “lite” version of their Diversity collection. They gave Pepsi their best IP the design most synonymous with their identity — and put it on a product that has mass distribution. The design didn’t change to accommodate a larger audience. The product changed to carry the design to a larger audience.

That’s a subtle but crucial distinction. And it required genuine trust from Pepsi’s side to not simplify, not ask for a cleaner or more “beverage-friendly” visual. To trust that the raw, hand-drawn aesthetic — the one that makes HUEMN’s clothing command ₹11,500 would work on a can.

It did.

Pranav captured the whole strategy without framing it as strategy: “Being a homegrown premium fashion label, our customer base consists of tastemakers. There is a certain privilege to that. I wanted people from a wider section of society to be able to hold the brand in their hands and feel like they are also a part of it.”

Not by making cheaper products. By putting the actual design on products that already reach everyone.

Final Thought

A ₹40 can that carries the same portraits as a ₹11,500 hoodie unchanged, uncompromised, fully itself is a small proof of something important.

The way to make a premium brand accessible isn’t to dilute it. It’s to find a different canvas for the exact same art.

HUEMN and Pepsi figured that out in December 2022. Most collaborations still haven’t.

Sources: ELLE India (December 2022), STIRworld (December 2022), Zee Zest (January 2023), Verve Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar India, Fashion Network India, FDCI. All quotes attributed directly to source interviews.