South Asian textiles and techniques are everywhere in fashion right now.
South Asian-inspired mirror work and block prints are starting to appear on runways from Milan to New York, embroidered into corset gowns and sewn into blazers. Coachella attendees wore sequined patterns from traditional Indian wedding skirts covering their outfits from head to toe, paired with camo combat boots, layered necklaces, and heavy jhumkas. Kantha-stitched jackets can be seen in storefront windows at a handful of clothing stores. Even designer bag brands have joined in, selling shoulder bags whose mirrorwork is hand-embroidered by Indian artisans.
Behind these beautiful outfits, extravagant designs, and the spotlight on South Asian communities, there is a question worth asking: Does this attention come with any understanding of where these techniques come from, or does it stop at appreciation for how they look and cross into appropriation? Three Seattle-based South Asian designers are watching that divide play out firsthand.
Roots before runways
Fashion designer Alpaja Rajbhandari makes clothing using traditional techniques passed down in her family. “I grew up watching my mom making our clothes,” she said. “She used to make clothes for us by herself. That’s how I got introduced to sewing, embroidery, and fabric painting.”
That relationship to traditional artistry grew into Ekadesma, a Nepali fashion brand Rajbhandari co-founded and has run since 2011 out of a studio in Kathmandu, where artisans hand-weave natural fabric using techniques passed down through generations. Last year, Ekadesma opened its first storefront outside Nepal in the heart of downtown Seattle. To Rajbhandari, her Seattle storefront shows that the same slow, handmade process can find an audience thousands of miles from where it started. Ekadesma, which translates to “once upon a time” in Nepali, blends those traditions with a modern, timeless design that appeals to many different cultures and demographics.
That cross-cultural reach is reflected in her customer base. “Most of my customers here are not South Asian, but local people or tourists,” she said. By her estimate, the vast majority of her Seattle clientele falls outside the South Asian community.
Rajbhandari is glad South Asian textiles are getting recognized in mainstream fashion moments, but she draws a clear line between someone wearing a piece because they understand it, and someone wearing it because it’s trending. “I don’t think people invest that much time in learning where the origin behind a garment comes from,” she said. “It’s all about the trend, especially because of social media. … The origin gets lost.” She tries to counter that by building storytelling into every piece, through designs made intentionally, in small batches, by artisans she works with and knows directly.
South Asian craft was always present in fashion; the credit wasn’t
Nazia Siddiqui is the designer, founder, and CEO of Transcend, a brand built around sustainable, circular fashion practices and heritage craft. Siddiqui grew up in India, where shopping trips meant picking out fabric and trims at local bazaars, and then creating self-designed pieces with her mother. When she moved to the U.S. at 15, “mall culture” was something entirely new to her. Shopping meant malls and fast fashion, racks of generic clothing, not the custom-made pieces she was used to.
Siddiqui decided to create a brand that made unique, artisan-made craft more accessible. “It’s about what makes each piece special,” Siddiqui said. Every design carries a specific heritage craft, including Zardozi embroidery, a signature of the brand’s first collection, along with block printing, Suzani embroidery from Pakistan, and Kantha fabric sourced from Bangladesh, used to make the brand’s bomber jackets. Siddiqui built Transcend around the idea that a piece’s origin, maker, and technique should be part of what a customer is buying, not hidden behind the label.
“High-end ultra-luxury companies do get their embroideries done [in India],” Siddiqui said. “They do go to India for their natural fibers, but they didn’t quite talk about it in the same way as fabric sourced from Italy or France.” Designers were hesitant to say a product was made in India, even if it was, as compared to saying something was made in other countries known for high-end couture fashion.
Siddiqui describes this stigma as the assumption that products made in India somehow equated to lower quality, and credits growing consumer awareness, along with smaller brands willing to name their sources, for the shift she’s seen in recent years. “It’s not like this shift happened all of a sudden overnight,” Siddiqui said. “We’ve been doing the work from day one.” She’s glad to see not only India, but other craft traditions worldwide, getting recognized, pointing to Africa as another example of artistry she believes is “finally” getting the attention it always deserved.
Fashion exchange is a two-way street
Dhivya Balasubramanian grew up in Kerala, India, where getting new clothes meant a visit to the tailor, not the store. Clothes were made, not bought ready-made, which was simply a routine part of life. “It was very common for us. It was not very expensive,” she said. “We would buy fabric every time.”
She now owns a studio in Queen Anne, reinterpreting South Asian textiles and silhouettes with a Western eye, in pieces such as a flapper dress incorporating a Lucknow Chikankari sari or a cocktail dress incorporating a Kanjeevaram silk sari. The garments include pieces of traditional history, but the silhouettes shift into a recognizable shape. That, she said, is exactly her point. “Fashion borrowing has never run in only one direction. As Indians, we borrow from and get inspired by European silhouettes; it’s a two-way street.”
For Balasubramanian, the issue was less about borrowing itself and more about what happens when the borrowing goes uncredited. She discussed a controversy in which Ralph Lauren used a traditional Indian Bandhani print and called it a bohemian wrap skirt. This pattern plays out with numerous brands, especially designer and high-end lines. Her ask isn’t for people to stop being inspired by South Asian design. “It would be nice if they said this is an Indian-inspired style of dressing,” she said.
Throughout history, cultures have always borrowed from each other, whether it is a stitch pattern, a silhouette, or a patterned fabric. The exchange of ideas isn’t the problem. It is the story getting lost when this exchange occurs: the hands that first tied a thousand knots into cloth to make Bandhani, or the centuries-old traditional fabric block-printed by hand before it even reached a runway or a desert festival.
A mirror sewn into fabric represents a technique passed down through generations. A lehenga isn’t just a skirt — it’s a garment built for a wedding, a festival, a celebration, a specific kind of joy. These designs are everywhere now. What’s still missing is whether they come with a name attached. The attention behind this moment hasn’t always come with an understanding of where these techniques come from, tipping the balance toward appropriation rather than appreciation.
None of them are asking the world to stop borrowing from South Asian craft. What ties their perspectives together is the story behind each piece: who made it, where it came from, what technique was used, and who it’s been passed down from. That’s what gets lost the moment a print becomes “boho” instead of Bandhani. And it’s what all three, in their own way, are trying to hold onto.
Ekadesma: 1322 5th Ave Seattle, WA 98101
Transcend: 600 Pine St Ste C10 Seattle, WA 98101
Dhivya Bala: 1005 West Howe Street Seattle, WA 98119
