Stories · Chapter 01 — India
Golden Procession
Zardozi is a slow craft. Metal thread is laid on the surface of the cloth and held down with tiny stitches, one couching stitch at a time.
The technique travelled with the Mughal courts and settled in workshops across north India. In Lucknow it is still practised by artisans who learnt it inside families and ateliers, on ceremonial garments, wedding wear and textiles meant to be seen from across a room.
The Golden Procession Jacket does not reproduce zardozi. It borrows its logic — gold against a dark, dense ground — and applies it to a varsity jacket. The elephant at the hem and on the sleeves is the gaja of royal procession; the lotus, or padma, sits between them.
On the back, four buildings share one waterline: Hyderabad's Charminar, the tiered gopuram of a Dravidian temple, Delhi's Qutb Minar and a carved temple façade. They come from different centuries and different regions. Placing them together is our choice, not a claim that they belong to one story — which is why each is named here.
Culture is more than a pattern. It has a place, a history, and a voice.
From line drawing to embroidery: the back panel, as drawn and as stitched.
SketchEmbroidered
“Gold thread was never decoration alone. It was a way of saying a garment mattered.”
Credits
Interpretation- Source
- Zardozi goldwork embroidery
- Location
- Lucknow, India
- Technique
- Metal-thread couching on dense woven ground
- Credited to
- The zardozi artisan tradition of Lucknow
Wear the story
Golden Procession Jacket — ₹3,199