For two decades, the Indian woman at Cannes navigated a particular kind of tension. The unspoken calculation ran something like this: how Indian is too Indian, and how Western is not Indian enough? The formula produced beautiful results, occasionally extraordinary ones. But it was still a formula. A negotiation between two aesthetics that did no...

Evening dressing is the most revealing fashion decision a woman makes. Not because of how much she spends. Because of what she chooses to say. The lehenga has a script. It knows its occasion, its function, its weight. An evening gown in Indian couture does not. It asks something different from the woman wearing it: not just a choice of colour or...

There is a particular kind of knowledge that cannot be digitised. It lives in the hands. In the angle of a wrist as it pulls thread through silk. In the years, sometimes decades, it takes before that movement becomes instinct. Zardozi embroidery, one of the oldest decorative arts in the Indian tradition, is exactly this kind of knowledge. It is ...