Celebrating the craft and creators behind India’s finest in luxury fashion

They say fashion is a language — and over the past few decades, India's very own fashion storytellers have become its most eloquent translators. It uses a vocabulary of tradition and craft from the past to create red carpet masterpieces to archival marvels. In doing so, they haven't just dressed personalities, often with one of their own, but also carried conversations layered with the country's textures, motifs and techniques from New Delhi to New York. In a celebration of India's finest craftsmanship, these masters of their crafts champion Indian textiles as living, luminous threads of India's cultural fabric. 

Kashida weaving a story of Kashmir

The intricate Kashmiri embroidery - Kashida - is known for its long, flowing, linear designs and pictorial motifs. Tarun Tahiliani, a doyen of drapes, weaves magic into his fluid silhouettes with the help of this age-old technique. With Kashida's delicate infusion into his ornate designs, the result is as beautiful as can be. Imagine the Indian needlework in a contemporary, global sensibility come together - expect nothing but poetry in motion set on fabric to come to life. 

Old-world opulence, remade with brocade

Brocade has always been the sartorial shorthand for regal India: metallic threads woven into floral arabesques. Two designers who have re-centred brocade in modern couture are Raw Mango and Sabyasachi. Raw Mango’s aesthetic is quiet and rigorous, treating brocade as a text to be read subtly with panels, trims and understated silhouettes. Sabyasachi, on the other hand, revels in brocade’s maximalist possibilities: full-length gowns, lehengas and jackets that luxuriate in pattern and colour, presenting brocade as a theatrical, almost cinematic form of storytelling. Together, they prove brocade can be both a whisper and an anthem on international runways.

Zardozi, creating ornate craft as contemporary couture

Zardozi is purely ornamental, and history is witness to it. Ritu Kumar and Sabyasachi’s engagement with zardozi reframes the technique for today. Where zardozi once marked status and ceremony, these designers give it new choreography: pairing dense metallic embroidery with unexpected modern cuts, or letting a zardozi-bordered saree become a fashion statement in the modern setting of pre-draped sarees. The handwork remains the star; the silhouette is the stage. Globally, zardozi speaks not just of wealth but of an artisanal patience that many contemporary fashion scenes prize.
 The understated drama of white on white through Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla
Chikankari’s delicate tonal embroidery — white thread on white fabric, clouds of floral motifs and airy stitches — is the craft of subtleties. Abu Jani Sandeep Khosla have long used chikankari to read as bridal romance and regal eveningwear, dramatising its softness with rich fabrics and opulent cuts. When chikankari presents itself, it refuses to shout; it quietly repays attention with depth, revealing stories of centuries gone by. 

Turning heritage into haute couture

Kashmir’s textiles — pashminas, sozni, aari — carry a mythic association of delicacy and luxury. Rohit Bal, long synonymous with ornate, story-driven Indian fashion, mines these traditions not as museum pieces but as palettes for haute couture. His design language treats Kashmiri motifs and techniques as embroidery, print and texture — layering them with theatrical silhouettes and jewel-toned colourways. As his legacy is taken forward by Fraze Tasnim and the Rohit Bal design team, Kashmir continues to become a spectacle, more than a memory that could be compared to wearable heritage pieces, worthy of its own museum space.

Indian craft meets futurism

Amit Aggarwal is known for pushing boundaries: the designer famously plays with metallics, synthetic textures and sculptural forms. When he turns to traditional weaves like Banarasi brocade and ikat, he brings a futurist sensibility without erasing the history of the weft. To reimagine this historically associated craft without Amita Aggarwal's architectural creations would be unjust. Aggarwal’s work suggests that innovation doesn’t have to overwrite origin stories; it can amplify them, repositioning centuries-old techniques within a new visual grammar. 

Gota Patti's festivities sparkle with conscience

Gota patti, the bright appliqué that has long been a staple of festivity in Rajasthan, carries an equivalent celebratory energy in Anita Dongre's collections. Anita Dongre has elevated gota patti beyond bridal trousseaus into a sustainable, wearable luxury. Her collections often place the craft in modern contexts — cropped jackets, fluid dresses and lightweight sarees — while foregrounding the artisans and archives behind the work. Dongre’s approach reframes gota patti as a form of joyful adornment that can be ethical and contemporary in silhouettes that are Indian in essence yet contemporary in effect. 

The return of the glossy, glamorous tissue saree

If the tissue saree is the language of screen siren glamour, Manish Malhotra is its most fluent author. The shimmering, almost metallic tissue fabric — diaphanous yet glossy, light-catching — has become one of Malhotra’s most identifiable signatures in modern times. He has used it to stage modern Indian glamour in a way that is instantly legible to global fashion enthusiasts: the tissue saree reads as an object of spectacle that preserves the saree’s drape while amplifying its visual impact. Under Malhotra’s lens, the saree transforms from regional attire into an international icon of showmanship and style that's truly made and loved in India. 

What unites these designers is not merely their technical choices but a shared ethic - craft is not costume. As India’s fashion language continues to be translated and heard around the world, it’s worth noting the form that translation takes: stitch by stitch, weave by weave, reimagined with intent and watch it become a living testament to India’s plurality of craft. And in today’s world, where the stories behind objects increasingly rule their value, that is perhaps the most luxurious thing of all.