The Origin Story

~On a wardrobe, a dupatta, and the love for handloom that started everything.~

My earliest memory of falling in love with fabric is from when I was four or five years old.

I remember taking my mother's dupatta and asking her to drape it around me like a sari. Wearing her bangles. Trying to look like her. But what I remember more clearly is sitting with her in front of her wardrobe, just watching and listening as she talked about her handloom saris. She knew each one by origin, by craft, by story. Chanderi. Banarasi. Pochampally. Kantha. And those stories, somehow, never felt finished.

"I was endlessly fascinated. By the hand-woven motifs. By the range of techniques across one country. By how much history a single piece of cloth could hold."

I didn't know it then, but I was already being shaped by something. A pull toward craft, toward making, toward the people behind the fabric. I used to wonder how one country could have such a diverse range of techniques and stories, and how each sari seemed to carry the world of the person who wove it.

That curiosity never left. It only grew deeper.

That pull has taken me to many places since, to NIFT Mumbai, to weaver clusters, to conversations with artisans whose families have woven for generations.

This is the first story.

The one that started everything.

In front of a wardrobe, with my mother, and a dupatta that was far too long for a five-year-old.

I am Aishani Srivastava, founder of Kari-Garan, a handloom and handcrafted brand rooted in the artisan traditions of India. This is the beginning of that story.

More to follow.