Northern delights

Four Kashmiri fashion labels that want to put the troubled region on the international style map

- NAMRATA ZAKARIA

There is always so much talk in fashion about the great strides Indian designers have made—both in India as well as internationally. Stalwarts such as Tarun Tahiliani have launched highly profitable joint ventures with Indian corporates, masters like Sabyasachi are reaching a milestone after another financially, and young guns such as Dhruv Kapoor and Rahul Mishra have taken over Milan Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week by storm.

It makes one wonder about how much talent must the rest of the country, those outside our megapolises or even in more far-flung politically troubled areas, possess. Like Kashmir, the land of immense beauty that has inspired everyone, from ancient Greeks to Sufi saints to even Bollywood.

“Kashmir is called the Valley of the Sufis. We are highly spiritual people,” says Tariq Dar, “Craft for us is akin to spirituality.” Dar, 46, and his label Pashmkaar, is one of the valley’s upcoming fashion labels that aims at selling across India and internationally as well. “I come from an artisan family. My father was 12 years old when his father died, and he was forced to be the breadwinner. His first salary for making an embroidered shawl was 25 paise,” Dar recounts. “But before getting married, he decided he would sell his shawls himself, instead of working for others. He started a small unit of his own. I was thus born into colour and embroidery, into craft and culture.”

Dar founded his label in 2011, taking the name from its Persian origins (‘Pashm’ means the finest silk in Persian, and ‘kaar’ means ‘work’). Pashmkaar makes the finest embroidered shawls out of Kashmir, but also saris in pashmina, pherans (the traditional tunics of the state) in velvet, silk and wool that Dar says even clients in New York are crazy about, and jackets in aari work. “Our aari, sozni and tilla work are the finest. We are expensive, but the masters of the craft,” he reasons.