Feature

For generations, master artisans across India and the Global South supplied luxury markets while their names stayed hidden behind export houses, intermediaries and non-disclosure agreements. A new incubator asks whether that labour can carry its own name and command luxury value. Susan Walker, whose nonprofit Ibu operates from the American city of Charleston, explains how visibility and price might converge.

As slow fashion turns handmade cloth into a selling point, the artisans behind Ikat and Kantha have gained visibility without a matching rise in pay or security. The imbalance raises a pointed question about who profits from the story of craft. Megha Agarwal, founder of Studio Maeve, weighs whether artisan recognition delivers genuine dignity or borrowed branding.

For generations, the women who hand-paint Kalamkari cloth in southern Andhra Pradesh sold their labour without their names attached to it. Anita Reddy, a social worker who founded the artisan collective DWARAKA, set out to change that by placing control of both the making and the pricing with the women themselves, from the first outline to the final price.

Conventional apparel was built around a body that could button, reach, grip and stand without assistance. For the large share of the population whose bodies did not meet those assumptions, clothing was a problem managed through specialist channels or post-market alteration. Retailers including Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Zara, Marks & Spencer and Kohl's are now integrating adaptive lines into standard stores, reflecting commercial recognition of a market failure the industry long declined to name.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz sent shockwaves through global energy markets, but in Surat, India's manmade textile hub, the impact arrived not in boardrooms but in workers' kitchens. With LPG unavailable and alternatives prohibited by landlords, thousands of migrant textile workers have been forced to abandon their livelihoods and return home, triggering a production crisis that the industry is still struggling to contain.

The unassuming minstrel. Rooted. Guwahati-based singer, lyricist, music director, Anupam Saikia’s music is just that — borne of the world he grew up in. As the songster gathers his compositions, a requiem in Hindi for Zubeen Garg, another album, he sojourns, as restless as his verses, from one performance to another in rural and semi-urban pockets where crowds swell to hear him croon. He’s been doing this since the Nineties, having added contemporary music to his oeuvre that spans folk, Bihu...

In an era where authenticity is increasingly elusive, the ancient, hand-engineered craft of zari is caught in a deepening crisis. Pure zari, painstakingly wrought from silver, gold and copper in Surat’s shrinking cottage clusters, is now overshadowed by an ever-expanding tide of cheap metallic substitutes. As precious metal prices soar, purity wavers, and fakes flood the market, the last generation of real-zari makers confronts a future as fragile as the filaments they draw.

His is a classic case of how an artisan from the grassroot level can rise to reach some of the most famed museums in the world. Not many know but he has, stitch by stitch, needle by needle, threaded his way into the cultural mosaic that this country is. His thread is his voice, his loom a battleground for respect. In conversation with Asif Shaikh.

Surat is built by people who arrived with little but resolve, turning hardship into high-growth enterprises. Their stories reveal a city that rewards speed, grit and practical intelligence—a place where partnerships form easily, risks are absorbed quickly and learning never stops. Here, ambition meets an ecosystem that converts effort into scale, making enterprise almost instinctive.

It’s a paradox wrapped in polyester. Surat—the city that spins out 60 million metres of manmade fabric every single day—stands on the verge of an industrial chokehold. With 700,000 looms running and ₹200 billion in turnover, India’s synthetic hub is built on imported muscle: machines, yarn, and know-how. Now, a compliance rule threatens to pull the plug on that ecosystem—testing whether the synthetic capital can truly stitch together scale, self-reliance, and sustainability before the loom slows down.