OLD HOBBIES, NEW HANDS

Gen Z is tie-dyeing tote bags, making charms, journaling by hand, and crocheting their feelings

- ARANYAA CHOWDHURY

At Puma’s recent Palermo Jamun launch, sandwiched between a DJ set and a photo wall, was something nobody expected to be the most popular corner of the room: A tie-dye station and a patchwork tote bag table. Without a screen in sight, in the company of fabric, dye, and a queue of people who apparently had been waiting, to make something with their hands. It’s safe to say that the brand had read the room correctly.

Gen Z — the generation raised on algorithmic content, infinite scroll, and the particular exhaustion of being permanently, inescapably online — is enjoying to log off. Across Indian cities, a generation is picking up crochet hooks, filling DIY journals with polaroids and dried flowers, making beaded charms, painting their own phone covers, and tie-dyeing white T-shirts — reclaiming the lost pleasure of doing one thing, all the way through, until it is done.