Mingei explores the beauty found in everyday textiles shaped by place, material and generations of knowledge.

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This collection is a celebration of India's textile heritage: the hand-spun and handwoven texture of cotton, the depth of indigo and other local natural dyes, the irregularity of hand embroidery, the bold geometry of Madras checks and ikat, and the woven complexity of jamdani.

 

These textiles embody a narrative of cultural memory and material knowledge, finding a home in an understated wardrobe inspired by utilitarian dress. Designed for ordinary movement rather than occasion, the garments become part of repetition: walking, working, resting, returning.

 

Memory shapes the cloth. Utility shapes the garment.

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Mingei takes its name from Japan's Mingei ("art of the people") Movement of the early twentieth century, which recognised beauty in the honest simplicity and utility of objects made by anonymous village craftspeople. Emerging as an antidote to unchecked industrialisation, it sought to preserve both craft traditions and the values they embodied.

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Mingei brings together more than two decades of House of Wandering Silk founder Katherine Neumann’s experience living and working in Japan and India. Japanese textile sensibilities and silhouettes meet India's regional traditions of spinning, weaving, dyeing and printing - alongside the values of self-reliance and dignity that Gandhi associated with khadi.

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Our cottons are spun, woven and naturally dyed by weavers' societies in West Bengal and Gujarat, and by WomenWeave in Madhya Pradesh, before being stitched by brothers Parvez and Lal in Delhi.

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