Craft of Continuity

We spotlight four labels from the Northeast that are transforming inherited techniques into contemporary expression.

- By KRITI SHUKLA

We first heard Hannah Khiangte's name the way many now do—via a viral post of Kareena Kapoor Khan describing one of her ensembles. A sharply cut silhouette in a weave that carried its own quiet authority. It made people ask the right questions: who designed this? And why haven't we been paying attention sooner?

Hailing from Lunglei in Mizoram, Khiangte has emerged as a designer whose work is rooted in heritage yet fully alive in the contemporary. She does not see the fabrics of her homeland—the iconic puan weaves—as artefacts to be preserved. Instead, she treats them as living narratives, ready for reinterpretation. As she puts it, “It’s never been about simply juxtaposing the old and the new but letting them speak to each other.”

Khiangte watched her mother and grandmother wrap themselves in the richly patterned puan. “In Mizoram, fabric is more than something we wear, it’s how we celebrate, mourn, and remember,” she tells me, attuned to how textiles embody memory, material, and meaning.

The puan finds new expression in Khiangte’s hands. Its linear weaves and bold borders are reimagined through tailored forms—structured jackets, fluid skirts, and sculpted dresses—that preserve the rhythm and weight of the original textile while allowing it to speak a modern design language.

However, she does not attempt to modernise the puan—she listens to it. Her design process begins far from the sketchpad. Khiangte spends time with women weavers who still work on traditional loin looms, listening to their stories and observing the rhythm of their hands. “The fabric carries its own pulse. My role is to listen to it,” she says. The resulting textiles are then studied, softened, or reinterpreted to inform new silhouettes. There is no fixed formula—her collections evolve from texture rather than trend. “Nothing about handweaving can be rushed. It follows its own tempo,” she adds.