India’s Paris First
WforWoman made history as the first Indian high‑street label showcased at Paris Fashion Week, blending vintage European silhouettes with intricate Indian textiles on the global stage. (thehindu.com) Meanwhile Dior’s ongoing collaboration with Mumbai’s Chanakya School of Craft continues to export Indian embroidery into couture conversations. (freepressjournal.in)
WforWoman’s Paris presentation was built around four themed edits — Poetic Reverie, Pristine Summer, Youthful Celebration and The Holiday: The Indian Way — and was led by head of design Sreyashee Halder. (thehindu.com) Paris Fashion Week ran March 2–10, 2026; that season programmed roughly 67 ready‑to‑wear runway shows and 31 presentations, including names such as Saint Laurent and Givenchy alongside W’s slot. (thehindu.com) WforWoman is a womenswear label under Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail Ltd (ABFRL). (abfrl.com) ABFRL reported a retail footprint of 1,226 stores across about 7.7 million sq ft as of December 31, 2025, and the company recorded approximately ₹7,355 crore in revenue for fiscal 2025. (abfrl.com) ABFRL notes that W (WforWoman) previously headlined the ‘Made in India’ segment at New York Fashion Week 2025, marking an earlier international push for the label. (abfrl.com) Chanakya School of Craft’s creative director Karishma Swali has overseen multiple collaborations with Dior, including a Musée Rodin commission for Dior’s 2022 haute couture show completed by about 320 artisans over roughly 190 days. (thehindu.com) For Dior’s Spring–Summer 2025 haute couture, Chanakya and Mumbai artist Rithika Merchant produced nine large embroidered panels that mobilised 306 artisans and took some 144,000 hours to complete. (whitewall.art) Chanakya — formalised as a school and atelier in 2016 — says it has trained over 1,200 women; more recent Dior projects involved as many as 360 artisans using upwards of 80 distinct hand‑embroidery techniques. (whitewall.art)
