For her spring haute couture show, Dior creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri lined the runway with 22 richly embroidered, brightly colored tapestries that highlighted subjects such as the Hindu goddess Kali radiating divine feminine shakti energy. Haute couture is the ultimate celebration of handcraft and French savoir faire, but Chiuri looked farther afield than Parisian ateliers for this spectacular display of artistry, whose tapestries took between 500 and 2,800 hours each to complete, collaborating with the artist couple Madhvi and Manu Parekh and the Chanakya School of Craft in Mumbai.

During her time at Dior, Chiuri has made a concerted effort to showcase the creative work of women. The craftspeople of Chanakya—which trains local women in more than 300 embroidery techniques—re-created some of the Parekhs’ canvases, which are inspired by mythology and folk-art forms like rangoli. They used couching techniques alongside traditional Indian fine-needle zardozi stitches to gradually blend colors and create a feeling of vibration. “I have been working with the Chanakya School of Craft for a long time, and they produce excellent-quality work,” says Chiuri. “Their savoir faire lies in a heritage common to many cultures, resulting in a wealth of fruitful exchanges. For me, it was essential to touch on diverse traditions, as they bring continuous and necessary added value to our work.” In an Instagram post about the collection, Dior credited the Chanakya School’s “petites mains”—a phrase generally used to describe those who work on couture in Paris. Many luxury labels have long relied on additional sets of hands thousands of miles away, but their work often goes uncredited. But the European luxury labels have begun to rethink how they credit and compensate the craftspeople across the globe who help assemble their garments. Beyond providing transparency, a value consumers are increasingly looking for when they shop, this kind of acknowledgment also serves to call attention to the craftwork of global artisans in the same way the labels touting “Made in France” and “Made in Italy” do.

gabriela hearst, manos del uruguay
Artisans knitting for Gabriela Hearst in Uruguay.
Courtesy of Gabriela Hearst
beading for johanna ortiz in colombia
Beading for Johanna Ortiz in Colombia.
Courtesy of Johanna Ortiz

Many independent designers—including Osman Yousefzada, Kenneth Ize, and Rachel Scott—have always been about celebrating the crafts and traditions of artisans from their countries of heritage in their designs and, in doing so, are upending the myth of a Eurocentric standard of what is considered luxury. They are naming and fairly compensating their collaborators as well as telling the stories of who makes fashion in a more inclusive way. “Our clothes are often made by someone who doesn’t get acknowledged,” says British Pakistani designer Yousefzada. “It’s a phenomenon I call ‘white faces, brown hands.’ ” Featuring colorful block-printed outerwear, handstamped in Pakistan using a centuries-old technique, his recent collections offer a corrective, fusing South Asian fabrics and Western silhouettes.

crocheting for diotima in jamaica
Crocheting for Diotima in Jamaica.
ANDRE NOBLE

American Ghanaian designer Abrima Erwiah got the idea for Studio 189, the Accra-based label she cofounded in 2013 with actress and activist Rosario Dawson, while working in Milan as a communications executive for Bottega Veneta. “I saw the power of second- and third-generation artisans and what it does to a country,” Erwiah says of the craftspeople who handweave the Italian house’s renowned intrecciato leather bags. “And I felt like we have similar craft traditions in developing economies.” Working with the Ethical Fashion Initiative, a United Nations–affiliated program that promotes sustainable development through the creation of living-wage fashion jobs, Erwiah and Dawson set up a cut-and-sew factory in Ghana’s capital city in 2015. They commission custom fabrics each season from artisanal communities throughout the West African nation and in neighboring Burkina Faso that specialize in traditional techniques, including hand batiking, indigo dyeing, and kente weaving.

A similar impulse motivated the South African designer Sindiso Khumalo to start her label in Cape Town the same year. “There are so many different artisans on our continent, and I’m really just here, as a designer, to try to highlight the work that they do,” she says. “An order from Net-a-Porter can literally transform revenue in a community.” Khumalo partners with NGOs and small workshops in South Africa and Burkina Faso on woven, crocheted, hand-printed, and embroidered looks. “Craft that comes from Africa is perceived as ‘ethnic,’ and it’s time to shift that narrative,” says Nigeria-born, Austria-raised designer Kenneth Ize. He moved back to his hometown of Lagos to start his label in 2015 and in 2020 opened his own workshop in Ilorin, employing more than 30 weavers. Ize’s signature stripes—seen for spring on slipdresses and sleek, tailored separates woven with shimmery gold yarn—place the Yoruba fabric aso oke, traditionally used for women’s wrappers, in a new context. The French luxury conglomerate LVMH seems to have gotten his message: Ize was a finalist for the LVMH Prize in 2019, the same year Thebe Magugu, who was born in South Africa, was awarded the top prize, becoming the first African designer to win it. Khumalo was a cowinner the following year.

artisan in sind, pakistan photo taken by osman yousefzada artisans block printing for osman yousefzada
Artisans block printing for Osman Yousefzada in Pakistan.
osman yousefzada

Then there are the designers working to take what may have been considered domestic crafts into the fashion space. Emily Adams Bode Aujla’s label, Bode, aims to preserve domestic craft techniques in India—such as quilting and hand embroideries used for baby blankets or wedding linens—by applying them to clothing like a quilted jacket or floral embroidered pants. Rachel Scott’s label, Diotima, transforms humble cotton crochet table doilies made in Jamaica into harness tops and eye-catching details on sharp tailoring. “I wanted to explore the connection between something being done in Jamaica informally and something being done in a very formal and elevated way,” says Scott, who was born and raised in Kingston.

“Tie-dye is usually regarded as DIY, and here we’re elevating it into a wardrobe staple,” says Nepalese American designer Prabal Gurung of his new signature tie-dye knits, handmade in Kathmandu from soft Himalayan cashmere-wool yarn. Colombian designer Johanna Ortiz and Chilean American designer Maria Cornejo both center Indigenous female artisan partners. Ortiz’s signature accessories are traditional Andean mochila bags; for spring, they were handwoven with thousands of seed beads by Emberá Chamí artisans. Each features a “made with love in Colombia” label. “If you think about it, craftsmanship is actually a synonym of luxury,” says Ortiz. “It is all about something handmade that is so exquisite, exclusive, and unique that no product is exactly the same as the others.”

bode factory in india, embroidery
Embroidering for Bode in India.
Courtesy of Bode
weaving sindiso khumalo blue denim c maison yissé
Weaving for Sindiso Khumalo in Burkina Faso.
Courtesy of Maison Yissé
zero  maria cornejo , 
photo courtesy madres  artesanas

hdr
Knitting for Zero + Maria Cornejo in Bolivia.
Courtesy Madres & Artesanas
studio 189, making of batik
Artisans creating batik for Studio 189 in Ghana.
Adam Desiderio

For the past 15 years, Cornejo has been working with the Bolivian artisan cooperative Madres & Artesanas Tex on alpaca and organic-cotton handknits and inviting them to sign their work. “I remember when we first asked them to sign the labels, they were very excited about that because often people who do craft are just basically invisible,” she says.

Uruguayan American designer Gabriela Hearst unveiled three artisan collaborations as part of her New York label’s spring collection. She partnered with Madres & Artesanas Tex on vibrantly patterned crochet dresses, commissioned a rainbow knit poncho from the female artisan network Manos del Uruguay, and worked with weavers in Navajo Nation on striped swatches that she stitched onto the bodice of a gown and the storm flaps of a trench.

making macramé for chloé in madagascar
Making macramé for Chloé in Madagascar.
Akanjo Madagascar

At her Chloé show in Paris, Hearst took her commitment to artisanal craft a step further with the launch of Chloé Craft, a new label with a spiral logo denoting that the pieces are made by global artisans. The first product assortment features a series of colorful dresses hand-macraméd from deadstock silk by artisans at Akanjo, a Madagascar-based World Fair Trade Organization member. Akanjo has been making products for European luxury brands—including Chloé—for more than two decades, but what’s pretty revolutionary is that Hearst sees the East African provenance as a major selling point. “Craft is craft,” she says. “It is important to understand that every single culture has a history and tradition of craft. The Italians have it, the French also, but so do Indigenous civilizations. Celebrating every craft of the world without dividing it seems more appropriate to me.”


This article originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of Harper's BAZAAR, available on newsstands May 3.

GET THE LATEST ISSUE OF BAZAAR