The artisan as heroine

I first wrote about Monica Shah and Karishma Swali-now known as "the Chanakya girls"-in 2019. I was completely fascinated by an embroidery school they had set up in Mumbai's Byculla, formerly part of Girangaon or the textile mill hub that once built the city. The ladies together run The Chanakya School, which invites less privileged women from nearby areas to learn embroidery to upskill them and create employment opportunities.

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

The school's building is an all-white modernist and air-conditioned space, much like a massive art gallery, with foldable designer chairs and an AV room. "Embroidery is a male-dominated field, but we wanted to bring more women to the workforce and thus empower them," the ladies had told me then. Shah and Swali are sisters-in-law, and they worked for the successful embroidery house, Chanakya, that they inherited from Swali's father and Shah's father-in-law, Vinod Shah. Chanakya was among the chief embroidery various international hubs for labels like Gucci, Fendi, Giambattista Valli, Valentino, and most famously Dior.

Earlier this year, Dior hosted its first fashion show in India, at Gateway of India, as a tribute to their embroidery partners in Chanakya, highlighting the dependence of European couture on Indian embroideries and embroiderers. It was such a rare and transparent tribute to a partnership that has only and insufficiently been called 'suppliers' before this.