Rooted & Reimagined: My Cultural Lens on Fashion
There’s something so powerful about coming back to your roots especially when those roots are woven with millennia of textile traditions, artisanal heritage, and handloom stories. For me, creating a fashion label is not about appropriating my culture, it's about designing with it, honouring it stitch by stitch.
Threads of the Past: My Foundation
Growing up in India, fashion was never performative; it was personal. Every drape, fibre, and thread was imbued with meaning. I can still recall the way handloom cotton saris felt featherlight when dropped over each shoulder at family gatherings, the breathability of chikankari kurtas in sultry monsoons, and the bold metallic, bold weave of zari borders with the understanding they sparkled intentionally or not. To me, they weren’t simply clothing; they were cultural memory walking.
What the West often misses is that Indian textiles have always functioned in lock-step with slow fashion systems they are handwoven, low impact, dyed with natural pigments, and produced through zero-waste processes that have been utilized for generations. While sustainability has become a fashion forecast buzzword, it has always existed as central part of the Indian textile industry. For a long time globally, however, our fabric has been reduced to ‘occasion wear’ it is saved for weddings or festivals or for editorial instances genetically modified to be labeled as “ethnic” (Strike Magazine, 2023). Why should our textiles simply be positioned this way?
Cultural appropriation vs. cultural appreciation is one of the most pressing discussions in fashion right now. We’ve all seen too many instances of designers extracting motifs, embroideries, and silhouettes from Indian craft traditions that often don't credit, contextualise, or, most importantly, engage with the communities that created them. As Vogue revealed in their September 2023 issue, the extractive relationship then turns sacred, storied traditions into mere style (Vogue 2023).
The ideal future I see is not an extractive one. To me, fashion should shift from being extractive to collaborative. It’s not enough to use visual cues from Indian artisans; we must humanely and ethically engage them. That means paying a fair wage, working with complete transparency, and honouring these artisans as co-designers instead of as production suppliers with very little meaning or input in what they’re making.
As Jain noted, in fashion cultural preservation means sustaining the communities that maintain these legacies and not just commemorating techniques on international construction (Strike Magazine, 2023). This is what excites my vision of the future of fashion: it’s decolonised, cooperative, and craft aware.
It’s time Indian textiles reclaimed space in contemporary wardrobes but as something other than costume: as core essentials. Just picture khadi coords in luxe cuts, tussar silks repurposed into soft tailoring, or Banarasi brocade transmuted to daywear. This isn't just fusion, it’s rooted and relevant fashion.
Refernces
Pinterest user unknown (2025) Indian Pattern moodboard [image], Pinterest website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.pinterest.com
Pinterest user unknown (2025) Culture Appropriation [image], Pinterest website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.pinterest.com
Strike Magazine (2023) Indian fashion fusion: Reclaiming cultural expression through style, Strike Magazine website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.strikemagazines.com/blog-2-1/indian-fashion-fusion
Vogue (2023) Cultural appropriation vs. appreciation in fashion: Where do we draw the line?, Vogue website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.vogue.com/article/cultural-appropriation-appreciation-fashion-september-2023
Google (2025) Google image search results for "Khadi fashion" [online image collection], Google website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.google.com/search?q=khadi+fashion
Google (2025) Google image search results for "Tussar silk fabric" [online image collection], Google website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.google.com/search?q=tussar+silk+fabric
Google (2025) Google image search results for "Banarasi brocade" [online image collection], Google website, accessed 4 June 2025. https://www.google.com/search?q=banarasi+brocade
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