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Custom colours matched to the bride's outfit
The workshop
Twelve people, all on the payroll, all in one workshop in Mumbai. We do not subcontract embroidery to homes we have not visited.
Two master cutters draft every pattern by hand from your measurements. Between them they have thirty-odd years on tailored menswear, which is why an unusual back or a dropped shoulder is a conversation rather than a problem.
Metal-wire embroidery worked on a frame with a hook. It is slow, it is done sitting, and it is the reason a heavily worked sherwani costs what it does. Four artisans, all working here full time.
Chain-stitch worked with a needle from above the frame. Faster than zardozi and better suited to the lighter pieces — a mehendi kurta or a sangeet bandhgala.
Lining, buttonholes, hooks, the pressing that decides whether a collar stands. Unglamorous and completely determining.
Monthly salaries, not per-piece rates. Piece rates are what push an embroiderer to work faster than the work allows, and it shows in the back of the panel. Overtime is paid at time and a half and is voluntary, including in wedding season when we could sell more than we can make.
Because we have not asked properly. Photographing someone at work and putting them on a shop page is a thing to get consent for in person, in their own language, with the option to say no. That is happening this month, and these placeholders will be replaced with real photographs and real names of the people who agreed.