Kantha Couture on the World Stage
Once confined to rural workshops, kantha stitch is now appearing in London showrooms and Paris pop-ups. We meet the artisans and the entrepreneurs bridging both worlds.
Nadia Islam6 min read
fashion
The Drape, Reimagined
How Dhaka's new wave designers are reinventing the sari
Nadia Islam
Fashion Director
1 September 20268 min read
A generation of Bangladeshi designers is fusing centuries-old jamdani craftsmanship with architectural draping techniques borrowed from the global runways. The result? Something wholly, breathtakingly new.
The sari has always been alive. It breathes with the wearer, shifts with the season, tells the story of a thousand looms and a thousand hands. But in the ateliers of Gulshan and the studios of Dhanmondi, something unprecedented is unfolding.
Designers like Rina Ahmed and Kamal Hossain are no longer treating the sari as a fixed form. They are treating it as material — as clay.
"When I drape," says Rina, pinning a length of organza muslin over a mannequin in her sun-lit studio, "I am not following tradition. I am arguing with it."
The results are stunning. Saris worn off-shoulder with sculptural pleats. Six-yard lengths structured into cocoon silhouettes. Blouses redesigned as boxy crop jackets. Each look is immediately recognizable as rooted in Bengali heritage, yet entirely without precedent.
This season, the key fabric is jamdani — the fine hand-woven cotton recognized by UNESCO — but treated with digital embellishment, over-dyed in indigo and rust, or layered with transparent organza so the traditional motifs become ghostlike beneath.
#sari#jamdani#dhaka-designers#editorial