The rise of Kutch's weaver-designers who are reclaiming their craft and credit

"Green or yellow?” Jepar Rajesh Karsanbhai, 26, asks ChatGPT on his phone about the colour palette of his brand’s spring-summer collection. Sitting in the verandah of his onestorey house in Sangnara, about 50km from Bhuj in Gujarat’s Kutch district, he’s keen on green—the kind he’s noticed when sunlight falls on the castor oil leaves growing outside his house.

“Light yellow is trending. It will help you bring more visual impact,” ChatGPT suggests.

Rajesh chuckles: “I will do both.”

Since launching his label, Inspire Weave, two years ago, Rajesh, a class X dropout, has been experimenting with ways to grow his work, especially on Instagram, the source of most of his 50-plus clients across India. He began by posting images of finished products—shawls and dupattas he had woven from kala cotton, one of the oldest and hardiest cotton varieties traditionally grown in eastern Kutch. Today, his feed has transitioned from static photos to mini vlogs documenting his identity as a fourth-generation weaver, and the role his family—parents, younger brother and grandmother—has in the weaving and preparatory processes, from bobbin filling and warping to starching, and shows how yarn becomes fabric.

He also comments on the profession’s work-life balance: Each member of the family works 5-6 hours daily, “but it’s more like meditation for us.” Rajesh’s videos regularly introduce his 5,000-odd followers to the 35 weavers—most in the 18-30 age group—with his enterprise, alongside Inspire Weave’s latest drops. He tracks fashion trends on social media and, on occasion, turns to AI to visualise designs and understand colour trends. He’s also building the brand’s website. “If you don’t tell your story, how will anyone know you? My father, grandfather, most people in our village have spent decades working as weavers for others (brands, designers and traders). They barely made enough money and received no recognition. But that’s not the legacy I want to carry forward,” says Rajesh, whose brand makes close to ₹3 lakh a month. “The legacy I want to build is one where my family name, my craft, my region get the attention they deserve.”

He is one of the many young weavers across Kutch who are taking charge of the narrative by starting their own enterprises, combining their inherited skills with newly-acquired ones of sustainable designs, digital marketing and supply chain logistics. Together, they are carving out a new profile of the weaverdesigner-entrepreneur. Social media has further widened the reach, their Instagram feeds functioning as daily reminders of how far their work can travel. In doing so, they are piggybacking on the rising global visibility of India’s crafts. Even as international brands tap into traditional techniques, this community of weavers in Kutch feels a need to preserve and advertise their uniqueness.

As Mubassirah Khalid Khatri, a 27-year-old designer and the only female hand-block printer in her village of Ajrakhpur, puts it: “If Prada can show our Kolhapuris on its runway, what is stopping me from taking my centuries-old handblock printing craft, ajrakh, global?” And she has done exactly that with her ajrakh-focused brand Elysian, which primarily sells kaftans to a global clientele. Started in 2021, she helms it with her father and brother, who also do wholesale work selling ajrakh suits, dupattas, kurtas. Together they earn about ₹20 lakh a month. Growing up, they used to live in a rented one-room house. Today, they own two cars, a two-storey house and a motorcycle. Last year, Mubassirah was one of the five artisan-designers, all sponsored by Design Craft, to present her collection of kaftans and shirts at the Lakme Fashion Week held in collaboration with the Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI).

A SOPHISTICATED INHERITANCE

While Ajrakhpur has 84-100 families involved in ajrakh printing, Sangnara is home to nearly 200 weavers of kala cotton, believed to have been in use as far back as 3000 BC. Indigenous to Kutch, this rain-fed crop was resistant to disease and pests. Just like kala cotton weaving, Kutch has long held an unbroken legacy of creativity. Today, unofficial estimates peg the number of traditional crafts practised in the region close to 30. This sheer diversity makes the region unique. “Kutch has such a concentration of vibrant, living craft traditions within a relatively small region,” says Judy Frater, who has worked in the region for over three decades. She was the director of Somaiya Kala Vidya, a school in Kutch’s Meghpar that was established in 2014 by K J Somaiya Gujarat Trust to offer design and business education to traditional artisans.

In ancient times, textiles and objects from the region would make their way to West Asia and Africa through the port of Mandavi. Kutch communities, faced with a harsh landscape and climate, had to adapt to using resources wisely. They transformed sheep and camel wool, or desi oon, gathered from pastoral communities like Maldharis, into vibrant shawls, and cotton provided by the Ahirs into clothing. Kharad artisans would take this wool to create rugs or khurjani to be perched on camel backs. Woven textiles such as mashru thrived as did printed textiles like ajrakh and bela. The women from the Rabari, Garasia Jat and Mutava communities carried forward embroidery styles of suf, khareek and paako, while also making mud-and-mirror work.

The nomadic pastoral communities were both the source of raw material and consumers of crafts like metal bells. Over time, this existing culture was enriched through migration from Rajasthan, Sindh and parts of northern India. For instance, the Meghwal community brought with it the art of leather making from Rajasthan over 600 years ago. A subgroup, the Meghwal-Maru Vankar community, came up as master weavers over time. The areas of Banni Pancham, Bhujodi and Kothara emerged as key craft hubs.

Each of these cultures has responded to the changing times in its own way, but the rise of the artisan-designer is being seen more in textiles— weaving, block printing and embroidery. To understand this trajectory, it’s instructive to know how textile production responded to new challenges in the post-independence era. In the 1950s, chemical dyes were introduced as a cheaper alternative to natural dyes while mechanised looms were preferred for mass production. The coarse kala cotton, with its short staple length, didn’t adapt well to the machine, and its use soon petered out. Around the 1970s-80s, acrylic yarn and Merino wool were introduced to increase production.

“The design might have been beautiful but the product was not big on value,” says Juhi Pandey, a Jaipur-based social design professional who has worked with artisan clusters across the country through her eponymous Studio Juhi. “Mills in Ludhiana began to bring out imitations of the famous Kutchi shawls. As a result, in the 1990s, the number of weavers in the region started declining. The youth moved out to take up other jobs. Many weavers didn’t want to marry their children into other weaver families.”

The devastating earthquake of 2001 didn’t just lead to a widespread loss of life — over 20,000 people died—but also severely impacted livelihood. The craft-dependent economy of Kutch found it hard to recover from the loss of homes and equipment. Many youngsters from weavers’ families started to work in factories, which had come up in Kutch as a result of government incentives.

The one thing that set Kutch apart at the time was just how quickly civil society was mobilised to come to the aid of craftspersons. The rehabilitation efforts were spearheaded by the Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan, a collective of grassroot not-for-profits. This led to the rise of organisations working on different issues—the Hunnarshala focused on sustainable building technologies, SETU Abhiyan strengthened local governance and village welfare. Organisations such as Satvik, which promoted sustainable organic farming practices, and Khamir, a 2005 joint initiative of Kachch Nav Nirman Abhiyan and the Nehru Foundation of Development to preserve and promote traditional crafts, also left an impact. “The Kala Raksha Vidyalaya was started in 2005, north of Bhuj, to educate traditional artisans in design,” says Meera Goradia, who has been working in the crafts sector since 1989. “Then there was Shrujan, a not-for-profit near Bhujodi, which had long been working with the women of Kutch to revitalise the skill of hand embroidery.”

At this time, some other traditions found themselves at a critical juncture: to tap into new markets or diversify. For instance, the communities practising lippan, or mirror-and-mud-work, didn’t want to scale up as this work was too labour-intensive. Instead some of the families focused on embroidery, which had the potential of landing more orders. The revival of kala cotton from 2006 was of great significance to weavers and embroiderers from Meghwal-Maru Vankar and Rabari communities. Weavers adopted a wait-and-watch approach as a range of kala cotton products were developed, with Khamir leading the research and development. Acrylic, which had seen a boom earlier, seemed to have run its course as customers began to perceive the designs as ordinary and the value as low. Prices of products dropped and wages began stagnating. “At the time, very few entrepreneurs were taking their craft directly to the market. The rest were visiting government exhibitions or sending their weaves to master artisans. Once kala cotton started catching the market’s imagination, the recognition inspired many weavers to start their own enterprises,” explains Meera, author of Weaving with Compassion: The Rikhyas of Kutch (Tara Books).

The demand for indigenous fibres began to grow, especially among master weavers who had earlier been hesitant to use them. Due to variety of such factors, over the following 12-13 years, the size and scale of the enterprises changed. Wages too increased due to the programmes led by not-for-profit organisations. These days, a weaver can earn ₹1,000-1,500 a day, a big increase from ₹ 300-350 from more than a decade ago. According to Judy, since 2021 there has also been a concerted push to bring tourism to the region—for instance, the annual Rann Utsav, which has been taking place between October and March since 2005. “That has significantly raised awareness of Kutch’s craft and culture both within India and globally,” Judy says.

All of this has had a cascading effect of making traditional crafts appealing to younger generations that had earlier moved away.

GOING IT ALONE

After spending four years working as a waiter in a restaurant in Kutch’s Nakhatrana town, Rajesh quit his job in 2016 and returned home. He enrolled for an 11-month design course at Somaiya Kala Vidya, learning how to adapt his practice for different markets. It was here that he found the impetus to start his own brand, deciding that the risk was worth the rewards of working for himself. Weavers who had started their ventures in one room of their homes have now extended the enterprise to three rooms. Even though textile weaving is a labour-intensive process—where it can take 7-8 hours to produce just 3-4 metres of cloth on a single loom—younger artisans are finding renewed purpose.

Much of this change has to do with the very nature of Kutch communities, with an intrinsic entrepreneurial streak. Sunil Sethi, FDCI chair, elaborates: “They have that typical Gujarati dhandho (trading) mindset. The other thing, which I feel is the most important and hardly talked about, is family support.” In Kutch, as has long been the tradition, artisans live and work in close-knit clusters of relatives and neighbours, transforming what might appear to be individual enterprise into a collective endeavour. Juhi concurs, and believes that the only other region with a similar dynamic is Kashmir. “Just like Kutch, Kashmir too is a difficult zone to live in— maybe for different reasons—but there is a certain resilience to be found in the people there. The youth is taking forth their craft legacies,” she says. “It is the role of facilitators like myself to give that nudge so that the youngsters can find direction and create a unique space for themselves.”

Like elsewhere in India, caste hierarchies are woven into social structures in Kutch as well. There was a stigma attached with certain traditions, such as leather work, practised by the marginalised Meghwals. Craft revivalists have had to try and overcome deep-rooted prejudices when working with groups of artisans from different caste clusters. In Meera’s view, communities like the Meghwals have managed to adapt to those hardships. “The fact that they are now being recognised for their skills in weaving, leather work and carpentry, has also changed their equation with the ‘upper-castes’ such as the Rabaris.”

GETTING MARKET-READY

There is no formal data to map the rise of artisan-designers, but enrolment trends at design schools for artisans offer some indication. When Somaiya Kala Vidya launched its first programme, Business & Management for Artisans (BMA), in 2014. , it had 11 students. Today, it offers two more programmes, Design Course and Pattern Making. There are 11 students in Design, seven in BMA, and five in Pattern Making—all in the 18-29 age group and selected from over 50 applications from crafts villages in Kutch region. They cap admissions to ensure focused training. Besides Rajesh, Mubassirah is also an alum of Somaiya Kala Vidya.

To encourage more women to come forward, the school has kept the fees for women at ₹6,000 compared to ₹11,000 for men for each 11-month course. Students are selected on the basis of their existing skills in traditional arts and crafts, irrespective of formal education, and the programme is open exclusively to artisans of all age groups. The curriculum covers subjects ranging from optimising production and navigating larger markets to managing finances and applying for bank loans. “It’s been a slow change,” says Nishit Sangomla, the director of Somaiya Kala Vidya. “For generations, artisans have been told they can’t design—that a designer must dictate to them. That kind of conditioning inevitably affects confidence.”

At The Handloom School in Maheshwar in Madhya Pradesh, founded by craft revivalist Sally Holkar in 2015, the number of applications from Kutch has increased as well. The institution typically selects 20 students for its one-year Certificate in Design and Enterprise Management (CDEM) batch. For the past several years, on an average, threefour students from Kutch are part of it. Given that the youth work in craft clusters, they inspire others like them in the villages through their experience, resulting in many more applications each year. This course gets participants in the age group of 18-38. Over the years, The Handloom School has completed 13 CDEM batches.

“The idea is that they should be able to design their own products. Weaving should not be looked at as a monotonous job but a creative one,” says Prachi Bagde, programme coordinator at the institute. To make them market-ready, the course includes modules on marketing, social media awareness, photography and costing, besides sessions on different kinds of yarn, multi-shaft weaving, and more. “How to boost ads on social media, respond to online queries or how to communicate with a customer about your brand—these go a long way in expanding your market. In the latter half of the programme, we help them with a production plan and introduce them to buyer-seller meets in Delhi and Mumbai. We want to instil confidence that going forward they will be able to connect their enterprise with a marketplace,” she elaborates. The Handloom School does not charge a fee for the CDEM batch. The students are offered a stipend so that they don’t lose out on income while being part of the course.

WOMEN AT THE LOOM

In traditional weaving communities, women were charged with playing just a supporting role in the process, while managing household chores. They would prepare bobbins or keep the warp ready for the men to work with. A few enterprising young women have been at the forefront of change, like Vankar Amruta Babubhai, 23, another alum of Somaiya Kala Vidya, who wanted to make a name for herself in mashru, a warp-faced satin fabric known for bold stripes. Fourteen years ago, when her father began teaching her mashru weaving, she became the first girl in Bhujodi village to become a weaver. At the time, she was reluctant; her ambitions were still undefined. “My father said one line to me, and like in the movies, everything changed,” Amruta recalls. “Kutch is losing its rich craft.”

Today, she runs AB Mashru Weavers, selling suits, stoles, saris, unstitched blouses and shirts, to nearly 100 clients across India, the UK and Europe, all built through social media. She earns about ₹3.5 lakh a month, working out of her studio at home. Her participation at last year’s Lakme Fashion Week opened up new opportunities. She is currently collaborating with a leading fashion designer on a limited-edition collection. One can see in Amruta how the crafts revival has created an awareness amongst young weavers about their skills and labour being a form of art. “I’m open to working with designers only if my name is properly credited—not tucked away where it can’t be seen,” she says. “And I ask for the price I believe my work deserves.”

Traditionally, mashru is woven on a narrow 22-inch loom; Amruta is the first artisan in Kutch to have expanded it to 50 inches, enabling the creation of mashru saris. The loom she uses was built by her father. “I grew up watching him create clothes for the Rabaris, and then teach himself mashru weaving because there was no progress happening. It’s inspiring to see such deep love for craft so closely.”

Like her, Champa Siju, 29, was among the few women weavers growing up in Avadhnagar, a settlement built after the 2001 earthquake. On most days, you can find finely woven bags, stoles, saris and wall art designed by Champa being packed for shipping to customers across the country. She had not set her sights on weaving early on. She quit her studies after class IX and began to do odd jobs in a factory nearby in 2015 before realising that her calling lay in her family’s legacy of handloom weaving. “I would see my father and elder sister work together, and realise that there was so much shanti (peace) to be found in the process of weaving,” says Champa, who started her eponymous brand in 2019.

She has now taken her tradition into the contemporary realm by experimenting with wall art. The young weaver photographs the region’s landscapes—the Rann of Kutch, the villages of Mandavi, Bhujodi and Kotay—and weaves their likenesses into her art using kala cotton, sheep and camel wool, and found threads. Champa has now started incorporating plastic waste found in and around her village in her weaves. “Papa used to work with Khamir. They had started an innovation programme on recycled plastic weaving. That was my inspiration. It’s sad that our beautiful landscapes are being marred by plastic waste. I take that very plastic and use it as an extra weft in my weaves,” she says.

Her works have been exhibited internationally as well—in 2017, she participated in the Threads project at the Ruthin Crafts Centre, Wales, as part of a residency exchange programme. The design for the wall art is created entirely by her with her husband helping out with ideation. The only task that is outsourced is the framing for the woven art.

Young weavers are not just reconnecting with their textile lineage, but also with others in the ecosystem—sharing knowledge, experimenting and building networks. Arun Vankar, 30, from Rudramata village, 12km from Bhuj, graduated from The Handloom School and returned home in 2018. Soon after, he connected with Juhi Pandey, which led to a three-month project at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. “We worked on marketing and creativity using kala cotton and desi oon. Each team had one weaver and three design students,” he says. Among their experiments was the idea of an “on-loom garment”—creating an entire piece on the loom without stitching. What began with stoles evolved into larger products such as curtains, jackets and kimonos, each designed to carry the story of the fibre and the Vankar weaving community.

Along with three other weavers, Arun went on to form a collective called Kalori to work on a range of products. The group continues to collaborate on bulk orders and regularly exchanges ideas. Arun also runs his own label, Maru Craft. “Earlier, my father and grandfather had to take their textiles to cities like Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Delhi because there was no local demand,” he says. “The Rann Utsav changed that. Tourists began to understand the craft.” Today, he estimates that about 2,500 families in the region are engaged in weaving. His individual enterprise now operates 18-19 looms, with profits of 25-30% on bulk orders. In his spare time, Arun researches the histories behind traditional geometric motifs and adapts them for contemporary markets. His clients include designers and boutiques across India, and some of his best-sellers are three-piece suits and jackets.

A similar shift is visible in the work of Suresh Dhaiyda, 36, from the Meghwal-Maru Vankar community, Adhoi, who mentors younger artisans. Through his family-run label Kangshi, he works with the 700-year-old tangaliya weave, characterised by tiny bead-like knots formed by twisting contrasting threads around the warp. While he learnt the craft from his father, it was only after studying design at Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya, along with his brother’s training at The Handloom School, that he began rethinking tangaliya’s possibilities. “We started researching the market—what colours were trending, what products people wanted,” he says. In 2013, he developed a tangaliya sari, a technically demanding innovation that drew attention from institutions such as Bunkar Seva Kendra— or regional offices under the development commissioner for handlooms, Union ministry of textiles—in Ahmedabad. Today, he trains others in the craft cluster while continuing to experiment with new product categories like stoles and home décor.

Social media has allowed these enterprises to connect with a wider base of customers. This pivot to the digital realm took place during the covid-19 pandemic when visiting exhibitions and buyer-seller meets was not possible. Over the years, the weaverentrepreneurs have created their own style of storytelling on platforms like Instagram. Arun, for instance, experiments with the settings of his product photos: you get a glimpse of the landscape and rural life. Suresh offers quick insights into the weaving process. His brother Jeetendra is proficient in English and an avid photographer. They both have put their skills to good use on social media. “The daily updates on social media don’t just create awareness but bring in new customers as well. We also receive orders via WhatsApp. Earlier, our forefathers had to travel out of the village with their textiles. Now, we get orders while sitting at home,” says Arun.

Most artisan-designers’ products are priced from around ₹1,000, rising to several lakhs depending on the intricacy of the work, with many also undertaking commissioned pieces.

THE ROAD AHEAD

No entrepreneurial story is without its challenges. For instance, craft clusters are grappling with climate impacts, with the plant used to make the indigo dye for block printing and batik becoming rare in Kutch due to erratic rains. Also, most artisan-designers we spoke with have no immediate plans of opening a retail store, as they believe that doing so brings needless expenditure and stress. Online orders, travelling exhibitions and collaborations with prominent designers are ensuring a steady stream of money. What they are currently looking for is scale.

Sixth-generation batik designer Shakil Ahmed, 44, from Mundra, is struggling to find skilled labour as his business grows. The rapid development around the Adani port has drawn workers away from craft. “Many people have returned to their craft, but as our orders increase, we need more hands,” he says. The batik he practises is distinctive to Kutch. Unlike in Madhya Pradesh, where artisans use metal tools, or in Indonesia, where wax is applied with a pen-like instrument, or in West Bengal, where brush techniques are more common, Kutch’s batik relies on wooden blocks.

For Mubassirah, expansion comes with a condition greater inclusivity: she wants to work only with women weavers. Unlike her father, who specialises in geometric patterns, Mubassirah prefers more fluid, organic forms. “They require more patience, and men don’t have that,” she says. “Some women are joining, but I want more. For so long, the world here has been small—women didn’t dare to dream.”

For Rajesh, the challenge lies in keeping up with trends. Producing garments quickly and in step with the market would mean compromising on quality due to the use of cheaper fabrics and diluted embroidery. “I could do that, but do I want to grow faster by compromising on what my ancestors have given me? No,” he says. “I’ve seen weavers being dominated and made to feel inferior. There was always this fear that if the weaver became the designer, it would threaten someone else’s business.” He pauses, then reframes growth on his own terms: “My growth is when one family continues to wear a garment I made, across generations. That’s what most artisans want.”

And when asked why his next collection will feature both green and yellow, he smiles: “One for what the world tells me to do. One for what my heart says.”