The name ‘Lafaani’ is borrowed from Urdu. It means immortality. Quietly holding space for the timeless, Lafaani is beyond an abstract concept committed to creating clothing that outlives trends, upholds dignity, and carries the memory of every hand that brought it to life. At first glance, Lafaani is a sustainable fashion label. But peel the layers, and it becomes something else entirely – a living archive of indigenous cotton, forgotten stitches, intuitive embroidery, and the regenerative power of slow-making.

What if clothes weren’t disposable? What if they held permanence? How long did they last, and what did they stand for? That’s the question Lafaani has been answering since its inception.

Purpose inside, design outside

Lafaani was not born in a studio, and it did not emerge from mood boards, nor did its founders come from fashion. They came from the fields. During their master’s in sustainability, Drishti and Rashmick, the founders of Lafaani, spent months in India’s rural heartlands, learning from life. Working with farmers, waste-pickers, women-led SHGs, and artisan clusters, they uncovered a kind of wisdom that could only be inherited through hands steeped in labour. They walked the red soil of Ratnagiri, spoke to cotton farms in Andhra, and sat with weavers in Bengal, and slowly, a responsibility started taking root.

When they returned to build Lafaani, along with the fabric, they brought back knowledge and a perspective that design should not be the starting point but be a relationship – relationship with the land, communities, and the principle that sustainability is not a trend but a way of living.

Regenerative by nature and not just name

Lafaani is building the green label from the ground up. Their textiles start with landrace cotton varieties – Kala Cotton and Brown Cotton, which are naturally pest-resistant, rain-fed, and rooted in local ecosystems. They’re resilient companions of the soil, regenerating it with every cycle. Lafaani’s supply chain is mapped, transparent, and human.

From working directly with women-led textile organisations to collaborating with independent artisans, Lafaani chooses traceability over convenience, intention over scale. This results in a garment that looks good and feels right because it was never about ‘only wearing’ but also carrying the legacy, meaning, and voice.

Genderless design that remembers function

Lafaani’s silhouettes are intentionally inclusive – not in the marketing sense, but in the way they drape. The clothes are fluid, interchangeable, and often genderless, built around the idea of honouring bodies as they are rather than squeezing them into dictated forms.

But what really stands out is functionality. Think hidden buttons that turn a kurta into a jacket, or pockets placed where your hands actually rest or upcycled accessories that can be clipped, tied, or worn three ways. It’s modular, clever, and honest. These are clothes built to live with you. Through seasons. Through years. Through shifts in who you are.

The hand that stitches, remembers

Look closely at a Lafaani piece, and you’ll find embroidery that doesn’t scream. This quiet detail is part of a bigger philosophy: Lafaani doesn’t believe in designing for a season but for a story – your story. Their threadwork has a certain humility: intuitive, hand-led, and deeply personal.

No two pieces are identical. No pattern is mass-replicated. It is purely memory work that preserves stitches passed down through generations, reinterpreted without dilution.

Fair, fact-based wages

In the backlands where Lafaani works, the wages impact the decision whether a child stays in school or not. This is why Lafaani goes a step beyond minimum wages. Every artisan earns a living wage that reflects the actual cost of living in their region plus annual raises, bonuses, and flexible options to earn more. Because craftsmanship includes the artisan’s time, memory, and generational knowledge along with skills and it deserves more than the bare minimum.

Designed to last, fashion isn’t fast here

In an age of fast fashion, where clothing is cheaper than coffee, Lafaani insists on slowing down and designing for adaptability, not obsolescence, and creating fewer, better things.

That also means resisting the pressure to scale through shortcuts. Instead of pumping out collections, they’ve grown through D2C trust and mindful B2B collaborations, letting the artisans improvise, become co-creators, and be seen.

Fashion that remembers and reimagines

Lafaani is pointing us to a future where fashion can heal and not harm. Where design excites and explains. Where we know who made our clothes, where it came from, and where it’ll return. Because fashion can be regenerative, circular, strong, and sovereign – but only if we allow it. That’s what Lafaani stands for – care and immortality of cloth.