A Curator's Letter
Hello, I'm Navya.
I'm seventeen, based in Jaipur, and I built this index because I couldn't find it anywhere else.
Growing up in Jaipur, I was surrounded by extraordinary fashion — not the kind you see in magazines, but the kind that lives in the lanes behind Johari Bazaar, in the studios of Malviya Nagar, in the quiet boutiques that women in this city have known about for years and never quite written down. I wanted to write it down.
Over several months, I visited each boutique personally — some I had to ask my mother to take me to, some I found by walking streets I hadn't walked before. I spoke to designers, asked about their materials, their processes, their customers. I tried to understand not just what they made, but why.
The result is this index — 14 boutiques, 6 neighbourhoods, and one attempt to make Jaipur's fashion ecosystem visible to people who deserve to find it.
Navya · · Jaipur, Rajasthan
Researched, written and built entirely by me
Navya at Dera Amer, Jaipur · 2025
Essay
Why Jaipur's Block Printers
Matter More Than Ever
There is a workshop in Sanganer, twelve kilometres from the centre of Jaipur, where a family has been pressing carved wooden blocks into cloth for four generations. The youngest son, who is twenty-three, learned the craft from his father, who learned it from his grandfather. The patterns they use — geometric buta motifs, trailing floral vines — are the same patterns that travelled the Silk Road, that dressed Mughal courts, that made Rajasthan's textiles famous across the world.
Today, the family sells directly to two boutiques in Jaipur, one in Mumbai, and increasingly, to nobody at all. Fast fashion has made their price point feel expensive and their lead times feel impossible. A machine can print ten thousand metres in the time it takes their hands to complete one hundred. The question of whether that matters — whether the difference between a hand-pressed block and a digital print is worth preserving — is one that fashion rarely stops to ask.
I think it does matter. Not because handmade things are automatically better, but because the knowledge embedded in them is irreplaceable. When a block printer learns to read the resistance of different fabrics, to judge the right pressure for different dyes, to space motifs so they breathe instead of crowd — they are accumulating a kind of intelligence that cannot be downloaded or replicated. When that knowledge disappears, it disappears permanently.
This is why I believe the boutiques in this index are doing something more than selling clothes. The ones that source from artisan clusters — that name their suppliers, that use natural dyes and handloom weaves — are acting as nodes in a preservation network. Every kurta from Kilol that a customer buys is, in a small way, a vote for the continuation of the craft behind it.
The Jaipur Style Index is my attempt to make those connections visible. To show that choosing where to shop in this city is not just an aesthetic decision — it is a cultural one. And that the fashion ecosystem of one city, mapped carefully enough, can tell you something true about what it means to make things with your hands in a world that has largely forgotten how.
— Navya, March 2025
In-Person Visits
Every boutique was visited in person, not reviewed from a screen. I walked the stores, tried pieces where possible, and spoke directly with staff or designers. If I couldn't visit, the boutique wasn't included.
Designer Conversations
Where accessible, I spoke with the designers or store owners — about their sourcing, their customers, their intentions. These conversations shaped the tone of each profile more than any written source could.
Honest Assessment
Every profile includes both strengths and limitations. I made a deliberate decision not to write promotional content — if a boutique had trade-offs worth knowing, I wrote them. Readers deserve accurate information.
Process Note
How I Built This
I started with a note in my phone — a list of boutiques my mother and I had been to over the years, places I'd heard about at school, names I'd seen on Instagram. That list had about thirty entries. By the time I finished researching, it had fourteen.
The hardest part wasn't the research — it was the editing. Deciding what to leave out, how to write about a boutique I loved but that had real limitations, how to make the profiles feel true without being unkind. I rewrote the Anju Modi profile four times because I kept making it sound like a press release.
I built the website myself — the design, the code, and all the editorial decisions. I taught myself enough to make it look the way I wanted it to look. The things I'd add next: a map of all the boutiques, a seasonal edit that updates with new collections, and eventually — interviews with the designers in their own words.
Navya · · Built and written entirely independently
Boutiques
Indexed
Neighbour-
hoods
Boutiques
Considered
City.
Infinite Style.