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How Rahul Mishra is revolutionizing the label of “Made in India”

This profile was written as a part of a graded assignment for a Fashion Journalism course conducted by Ms. Sathya Saran.

“Recall the face of the poorest you have ever seen – and ask yourself if your contemplating will be of any use to them.” For Rahul Mishra, these famous words by Mahatma Gandhi have become his guiding light. Born in a small village in the Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, Mishra’s name entered the hall of fame alongside the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent when he won the prestigious International Woolmark Prize at the Milan Fashion Week with his collection The Lotus Effect.

“One of my only memories of my home in Lyallpur (modern-day Pakistan)”, my Nani said while showing me her old Phulkari Dupatta.

The earliest reference to Phulkari in Punjabi literature can be dated back to the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in the 18^th century, in Waris Shah’s “Heer Ranjha”, which describes Heer’s wedding trousseau, detailing the different clothing items. One of those was Phulkari. Grandmothers and mothers would start making a dupatta for a daughter as soon as she was born, since the birth of a daughter was considered to be auspicious in olden Punjab.