Haute by Hand
Indian craft, for centuries, has existed quietly within the rhythm of daily life—functional, intuitive and deeply embedded in community. But now what is changing is not the craft itself, but the way it is recast. India’s most unassuming inheritances are today’s global luxuries. The dull gleam of original pital pooja thalis of Moradabad, once stacked in ancestral kitchens, embellish Michelin-starred tables in Copenhagen and California. Hand-hammered copper lotas are styled as wellness mascots abroad; brass urlis from India’s South show off their antique perfection in boutique hotel lobbies of Marrakech and Melbourne. Pashmina shawls from Kashmir, jaamdaani from Bengal, kanjeevaram silks from Tamil Nadu, and patola from Gujarat are no longer just heirlooms—they are investment pieces showcased in Paris showrooms and New York concept stores. The attar of Kannauj, once tucked into wedding trousseaus, is bottled as artisanal fragrances which compete with European perfume houses. What was once desi domestic is now design-forward, sustainably sourced, and globally coveted.
Craft crusader, curator and textiles revivalist Lavina Baldota believes that the shift lies largely in language and perception. “The pottery in villages, made by kumhars, was part of everyday life and never positioned as luxury,” she says.
Processes that were always slow are suddenly being relabelled “slow luxury,” with time, patience and skill being framed as virtues. Designers are increasingly choosing to retain original craft vocabularies over translating them into palatable global terms. Guldasta remains Guldasta. Baans stays Baans. “The names carry provenance. The lens through which we are viewing craft has shifted,” Baldota notes. The designers of today are more than dressers of cloth horses and brides. Shruti Sancheti is one of them, who studied fashion, textile and jewellery design and has an MBA in marketing. She believes the renewed craft vocabulary merely reframes what has existed. “Indian craft has been about patience, skill, and intention. A handwoven sari takes months to make. A hammered metal piece carries years of practice.” As the global fashion and design industries rediscover the value of the Indian handmade, the human touch has acquired cachet. Yet as craft is retold and repositioned within the language of global luxury, an important question lingers: does this renewed admiration uplift the artisan? For Sancheti, the success of this shift will ultimately depend on whether value travels back to the maker. “I truly believe that karigars know far more than I do. What I bring to the table is not instruction, but a contemporary vision,” she says.
In many ways, Indian craft has always embodied what the world now calls slow luxury. “There is greater appreciation for provenance, for the story behind the material, and the hands that create it,” says designer Anita Dongre, who recently opened her newest flagship store in Los Angeles: the brand’s 13th store worldwide. Dongre sees artisans as custodians of deep generational knowledge. She feels the role of design is not to override that wisdom, but to create new contexts in which it can thrive. “The balance lies in evolution without erasure,” she adds.
In truth, revival begins to edge toward reinvention the moment a craft steps outside its original context and engages with a new one. Intention, more than anything, defines that transition. Through the Grassroot Artisans Project, Monica Shah of Jade has explored precisely this balance. “Ikat, with its trademark paisley motif, is historically anchored in regional traditions and classical drapes, and has been recontextualised into contemporary forms for the global wardrobe,” she says. Recognition of traditions like handmaking, sustainability, and longevity is embedded in Indian textile traditions for centuries.
In the past decade, several Western luxury houses have begun foregrounding this connection. One of the most visible moments came in 2023 when the French fashion house Dior staged its pre-fall runway show at the Gateway of India in Mumbai. Creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri collaborated closely with the Chanakya School of Craft, where women artisans are trained in haute couture embroidery techniques. Many of the garments shown that evening carried intricate aari and zardozi work that had taken hundreds of hours to complete, and unusually the embroiderers themselves were invited to watch the show. In a luxury industry where the hands behind the craft often remain invisible, the moment was widely read as an acknowledgement that the painstaking labour of Indian artisans forms part of the backbone of contemporary couture—their workshops called the “secret ateliers” of luxury fashion. A beaded dress or embroidered handbag sold by houses such as Hermes or Louis Vuitton may have passed through Indian hands long before it appears in a Paris boutique. Indian textiles have entered Western luxury through creative collaborations. The French footwear designer Christian Louboutin has partnered with Sabyasachi Mukherjee to create accessories and shoes incorporating kalamkari textiles as “paintings you can wear”, a phrase that captured the way many Western designers now view traditional craft—not simply as material but as a form of art embedded in cloth. Taken together, these episodes illustrate a broader shift in the global fashion imagination. The global fashion industry has begun to recognise the value of the Indian hand-made, not only as heritage, but as the future of luxury itself.
“Our engagement with craft clusters begins with recognising this inherent intelligence. Slow luxury, provenance, and traceability are not marketing frameworks layered onto the work. They are already present in the hand, in the rhythm of weaving, in the discipline of repetition,” says the pioneering prophet of textile-based fashion David Abraham of label Abraham & Thakore. Designer duo Prateek Jain and Gautam Seth of klove Studio, working with handblown glass for over two decades, have built long-term relationships with glass artisans and developed processes that are not mass produced. “We apply the same thinking at a different scale with objects that are collectible but still rooted in process and origin. We adapt application, not the skill,” says Jain. Meanwhile Peter D’Ascoli, creative director of label D’Ascoli, notes that craft clusters are being rebranded as blueprints for circular economies. “Their localised supply chains relying on indigenous materials like organic cotton, vegetable dyes, and waste-stone align perfectly with the sustainability ethos of low-carbon footprints.” Provenance is the ultimate luxury credential; GI tags serve as ‘birth certificates’, ensuring their purchase supports specific ancestral lineages and are linked to heritage. Vipul Shah, who owns Ganesh Emporium and Vipul Shah Bags, feels “a traditional textile may become a jacket, bag, or modern garment, but the embroidery, weaving, and hand process stay the same.”
P•TAL co-founder Aditya Agrawal believes India’s karigars never lacked skill; what they lacked was access to evolving markets and contemporary use. “The role of modern entrepreneurs is not to ‘improve’ craft, but to translate it for today’s lifestyles,” says Agrawal. P•TAL works directly with the Thathera community of Punjab and Haryana, whose metal craft is UNESCO-recognised. When artisans’ incomes grow, dignity returns to the profession, younger generations stay, and the craft survives organically. Gupta points out that “if pricing uplifts the ecosystem—fair wages, better distillation equipment, sustainable sourcing—it becomes value creation.” Prada doesn’t think so. In 2019, local artisans did not initially receive payment or recognition when Kolhapuri sandals appeared on Prada’s runway without attribution to the traditional craft communities of Maharashtra and Karnataka that have produced these sandles for centuries. After uproar ensued in India, Prada simply put out a public statement acknowledging that the design was “inspired by traditional Indian handmade footwear.” The company also said it was open to dialogue and possible collaboration with Indian artisans, which didn’t happen nor did anyone get paid.
The incident, therefore, remains widely cited as a case study in global fashion about cultural attribution, intellectual property of traditional crafts, and the need for fair compensation to craft communities
Indian heritage pieces and crafts fetch more than a handsome price. A spectacular example is a 17th-century Mughal pashmina carpet sold at Christie’s in London for about `60 crore—only a handful of such carpets survive outside museums, which explains their extraordinary value among collectors of Islamic and South Asian textiles. Similarly, antique Kashmiri kani and jamawar pashmina shawls appear frequently in global textile auctions. Such rare 19th-century shawls, woven with thousands of small wooden bobbins using the kani technique, and historically prized by European royalty and Victorian collectors can fetch `1-2 lakh or more at auctions.
Perfume offers another example. The historic distillation tradition of Kannauj produces natural attars distilled from flowers such as rose and jasmine. In recent years, niche fragrance houses and luxury retailers in Europe and the US have begun marketing these oils as artisanal perfumes, sometimes selling small bottles for hundreds of dollars, placing them in the same luxury category as heritage French perfume houses like Guerlain. Divy Gupta, a seventh-generation perfumer from Kannauj and co-founder of Raahi parfums, observes that in Kannauj, one doesn’t “collaborate” with karigars. Instead, one inherits a rhythm. “Elevating form and function wasn’t about modernising the soul—it was about translating it. Better bottling so the oil doesn’t evaporate. Cleaner labelling so the story doesn’t get lost. Packaging that protects the attar when it travels from Kannauj to New York,” says Gupta. The intertwining of haute couture and perfume has long been central to the identity of luxury, with French fragrance houses having emerged alongside fashion ateliers. Some of the world’s most enduring perfume legacies began in France, particularly around Grasse, where flowers such as jasmine, rose, and orange blossom have been cultivated for scent since the 18th century. Legacy matters; Houbigant’s fragrances were favoured by Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte. Grasse-based Fragonard and Molinar preserved artisanal methods rooted in the region’s botanical heritage. Chanel No. 5, created by Ernest Beaux for Coco Chanel, established perfume as an extension of couture.
Recognition does not automatically translate into income for craftsmen. GI tags anchor craft to place, lineage and community. “When aesthetic is backed by process, and when storytelling is grounded in fact rather than nostalgia, craft does not need to be romanticised. It simply needs to be understood,” says Rakesh Thakore of label Abraham & Thakore. Yet admiration alone is not enough. For craft to remain alive rather than ornamental, value must travel back along the same threads that carry these objects into galleries, boutiques and Michelin-starred dining rooms. Only then will the new language of luxury honour the old hands that have always sustained it.