Where Cloth
Meets Culture

Hi, I'm Viraat Sarwahi

I'm a student at the Calhoun School and a fencer, sewer, designer, creative, and storyteller fascinated by my heritage and all its intersections.

For my Junior Workshop I explored how many traditional South Asian crafts influenced, changed, shaped, and show up in the clothes we wear today, and how many of them get discredited and stolen along the way.

This project began with a question I couldn't fully answer myself: How have South Asian cultural and textile traditions shaped American and global fashion historically, and in what ways do these influences continue to appear in Western fashion and trends?