We didn’t go looking for the desert in the obvious places — not in camels, not in folk motifs, not in mirror work. We went looking for it in the feeling: the dryness, the stillness, the way light falls flat on cracked earth. That restraint became the collection’s design logic.

The soil came first, quite literally. We started with the palette — the colours you’d find if you dug your hands into Barmer’s ground — and everything else built outward from there. The textiles chose themselves once we knew what we were trying to feel.

Appliqué has a physicality that print simply cannot replicate — it sits on the fabric, it has shadow, it has weight. It also carries the mark of the hand far more honestly than most other techniques. We wanted the making to be visible, not hidden.

We leaned into tone-on-tone and texture contrast rather than colour contrast. When you’re working within a restrained range, the surface of the fabric does the heavy lifting. The way cotton catches light differently depending on how it’s been worked becomes the detail.

The co-ord sets. They carry both elements we care about most — the ease of a silhouette that doesn’t try too hard, and the appliqué work that makes you stop and look closely. Everything else in the collection felt like it was in conversation with them

We set a simple rule early on: the craft should reward the person who looks closely, but not demand attention from the person who doesn’t. If a piece only works because of its embellishment, we’ve failed — the silhouette has to hold on its own first.

Deliberately, yes. We stayed away from anything that felt seasonal — no statement sleeves, no it-fabric of the moment, no styling that would date a photograph taken six months from now. We wanted these pieces to look as right in 2028 as they do today.

Getting the appliqué placement to feel considered rather than decorative. There’s a thin line between a piece of work that anchors a garment and one that merely sits on it. We reworked several placements multiple times before the pieces felt resolved.

Simply. These garments don’t need to be finished with much — minimal jewellery, clean footwear, nothing that competes. They’re designed to be the thing you reach for when you want to feel put together without having thought about it.

That beauty doesn’t have to explain itself. We want every future chapter of Ekani Archive to carry this same quietness — garments that are grounded in craft, honest in their making, and designed for women who don’t need their clothes to shout.