The Lunar Raga Shirt, hand-painted with a moonlit landscape

Culture Notes: A Festive Season on the World Stage

September 25, 2026 Weave of Culture

Culture Notes is where we share the news that shapes how we think about Indian culture, and what it means for the clothes we make. Here's what's on our mind as the festive season begins.

The first Diwali as world heritage

On 10 December 2025, Deepavali was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, at a session of the committee held in New Delhi. It is the sixteenth element from India on UNESCO's intangible heritage lists, and joins Durga Puja in Kolkata, inscribed in 2021.

This year's Diwali, with Lakshmi Puja on 8 November, is the first since that recognition. For us, the interesting part isn't the certificate. It's that a festival practised in millions of homes, in countless regional ways, was recognised as living heritage: something that exists because people keep doing it, and keep changing it as they go.

The festive calendar

Sharad Navratri: 11 to 19 October
Durga Puja: 17 to 21 October
Dussehra: 20 October
Diwali (Lakshmi Puja): 8 November

Dates follow the lunar calendar and can vary by region.

Handloom, in numbers

National Handloom Day, marked on 7 August, was observed for the twelfth time this year. The figures behind it are a reminder of how much of India's culture is also its livelihood: more than 35 lakh weavers and allied workers, over 72 percent of them women, and 106 handloom products protected by Geographical Indication.

Every GI tag protects a name, a place and a way of making. It's why we're careful with words. We make Kalamkari, hand-painted, hand-embroidered and eco-printed clothing, always on natural fabrics, with bandhani, hand block printing and batik on the way, and we only use a craft's name when a piece is actually made that way. We wrote more about that in Kalamkari vs Hand-Painted Clothing, and you can see every craft we work with on Our Crafts.

Craft is moving into streetwear

Across India, a younger generation of designers is bringing embroidery, block printing and hand-painting into oversized tees, shackets and hoodies, often in small, limited drops. The appeal is simple: in a world of identical prints, something made by hand is impossible to copy exactly.

We think the next step is honesty. Tell people who made it, how, and what the story is. That's the standard we hold ourselves to with every piece we make to order.