We live in a world where clothes are so available, so abundant, that we rarely stop to think about how they’re made. Fast fashion. Industrial machines. Endless production lines.
And then there’s slow fashion. There’s MarketPlace.
Here, the story doesn’t start on a hanger. It starts at the beginning — with fabric, with hands, with dye, with intention. And it doesn’t end when the garment is stitched. It continues every time you wear it, quietly gathering memories.
Anwar Khatri is a batik craftsman from Kutch, born into a long line of traditional printers. Craft runs in his blood. But what sets him apart is that he didn’t stop at inheritance. He chose to formally study design at Somaiya Kala Vidya, deepening his understanding of material, process, and tradition. He isn’t simply preserving a craft — he’s questioning it, refining it, evolving it. He stands between artisan and artist.
Take his red batik prints used in Vaishali Tunic #72C-16 and Kamini Dress #72H-12. The process is layered and deliberate.
It begins with plain fabric, washed to create a clean base. The cloth is dyed a rich red using AZO-free reactive dyes and dried in the sun. Then comes wax. Using a hand-carved block, Anwar prints hot wax onto the fabric, protecting the red wherever it touches.
Next, the entire cloth is dyed grey using VAT dyes. The grey settles everywhere except the waxed areas. A second wax printing then preserves the portions meant to remain grey. At this stage, two layers of wax quietly guard two histories of color.
The fabric is then bleached and dyed again in a natural shade. Because the cloth has been lightened, this final dye can be softer. It seeps into the tiny cracks that form in the wax, creating the delicate veining that gives batik its life.
Finally, boiling water removes the wax. What remains is depth, contrast, and those unmistakable crack patterns — not flaws, but evidence of resistance, movement, and human touch.
When the fabric reaches the cooperatives, its journey continues. It is checked for quality, cut in small batches, and assembled into kits. Trained women stitch the garments, each piece checked, embroidered, and checked again.
No two lengths of fabric are ever identical. The cracks shift. The dye settles differently. The hand pressure changes. Each garment carries slight variations — subtle signatures of the people who made it.
That is the uniqueness of handmade work. It refuses perfection in the industrial sense. Instead, it offers character, texture, and truth. And when you wear it, you are wearing something that could only have been made by human hands, in that moment, in that way — and never exactly the same again.
