Sewing equal rights
"Everyday couture" might sound like an oxymoron to the cynics among us. But not to Karishma Swali and Monica Shah, the duo behind JADE, a couture-driven label. The family is readying to celebrate a decade in the business with a collection titled Oneness, to be presented this evening at Colaba's Taj Mahal hotel in the company of Maria Grazia Chiuri, artistic director at Christian Dior.

On Wednesday, Chiuri is also scheduled to visit the school of hand embroidery at Byculla, launched as part of the Chanakya Foundation. Long before the revival of traditional embroidery skills came under the spotlight, Karishma's father Vinod Maganlal Shah was combing the corners of the country to build a team of master hand embroiderers. They became part of Chanakya's founding team in 1984, a crafts manufacturing unit responsible for creating couture embroidery for Christian Dior, Gucci and Maison Margiela.