HELLO, India

Haiqa Siddiqui investigates if the world's renewed obsession with our unique craft-led design identity is just a fleeting trend or here to stay

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In an era of screens and quick-flip micro trends, what can age-old craft offer fashion?

An original Banarasi saree takes no less than 240 hours to weave. That time isn't just about making a product, but about carrying forward a legacy. It teaches us patience, and replaces the need for speed with meaning. Every weave is a labour of love, and generations of skill that no algorithm can replicate. And this truth isn't limited to the Banarasi alone. Every corner of India carries its own language of craft. Together they form a vast reservoir of skill and imagination, a living archive of fashion's future.

Because if the industry is to find depth again, it will be here, in India, where we see tradition intertwined with transformation and change.

You've seen the cummerbund, dupattas rebranded as Scandinavian scarves, and the most recent polarising example of Kolhapuris from Prada's Spring/Summer 2026 presentation in Milan. For decades, some of couture's most memorable moments have had an Indian fingerprint on them; only the credit tag was often sewn on somewhere else. It's interesting how the intricate beading and embroidery we admire so much on Parisian runways often take shape in India, before actually reaching the 'mecca' of fashion.

And this relationship is not neoteric. Early in the 17th century, the French courts of Marie Antoinette and Josephine Bonaparte sourced textiles from India while the French tailors received credit for it. Since Indian independence, global luxury fashion houses cultivated a special kinship with our crafts. And from the '80s onwards, the holy trinity of luxury, Dior, Chanel, and Hermès, has been quietly dialling India for backup. Not just because the ateliers here could pull off what a very few others could, but also because the craftsmanship came at an affordable price.