Shipping within the United States only

From Hand to Heirloom

The Craft Journey

The Founder

Isha Kesarwani

For eight years in New York, Isha found herself explaining where she was from. People knew India. They did not know about Lucknow. So she would refer to more popular cities just to be understood. It never sat right with her, because Lucknow is where she is from.

This is not just any embroidery. It is chikankari, a hand embroidery technique that is 400 years old and exists in one city in the whole world. It is also a dying craft, with fewer hands trained in it every year.

This brand is Isha's way of putting Lucknow and chikankari on the map. She is not just building a clothing brand. She is bringing a place to the world through its story, its detail, and its craft.

Isha Kesarwani New York is for those who belong to more than one place, for those who understand what it means to carry two cultures and want to honor both without compromise.

The Vision

Isha believes time, patience, and human touch are the highest form of luxury.

Her vision is to create pieces that carry emotion, pride, and personal history — pieces that are considered, collected, and lived in, not replaced.

Each piece is handmade using this technique, built to preserve the craft and carry it somewhere new. Every design is handcrafted by karigars whose skills have been passed down for generations, and this brand exists because of them.

The Story of Chikankari

A vocabulary of stitches

Chikankari is not one embroidery. It is many. Each stitch has its own name, its own hand, and its own place in the work — passed from one generation of karigars to the next, for four hundred years.

Ghaas Patti

GHAAS · PAT · TI

Grass and leaf stitch. The ground beneath the florals. It roots the gulab and gives the design its sense of place — without it, the roses float.

Hool

HOOL

An open pulled-thread stitch. Creates hollow centers within the flowers by drawing thread away rather than building it up. Where other stitches add, hool removes — making light inside the embroidery.

Jali

JA · LI

Meaning "net" or "lattice." One of the most prized and labor-intensive techniques in all of chikankari. Threads are pulled and manipulated by hand to create an open, lace-like mesh within the fabric itself — not added on top of it. The fabric becomes the embroidery.

Keel

KEEL

A structural definition stitch. It does not announce itself. It gives each motif clean edges and a finished presence that separates considered chikankari from careless imitation.

Murri

MUR · RI

Tiny raised knots packed together to build dimension in the rose centers. You feel murri before you fully see it. Each knot is individual, placed by hand, one at a time.

Phanda

PHAN · DA

Round, precise raised knots — smaller than murri, placed as quiet punctuation across the design. Where murri builds mass, phanda places emphasis.

Shadow Work

CHHAN · KAO

Embroidered entirely from the reverse side of the fabric. Its forms show through from behind — soft, present, and impossible to rush. The main stitch of The Thread.

Zanzeera

ZAN · ZEE · RA

The chain stitch. Runs through the design as outline and connector, linking motifs with a line so fine it reads almost like drawing. The structure beneath the softness.

Press