Fashion has never been about just clothing. It has long represented art, cultural identity, self-expression, and the countless stories of the hands that made it possible.
This week at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week, Manish Malhotra brought the intricate embroidery work of the women from the Mijwan Welfare Society to the international fashion stage in his debut collection, celebrating the bond between mother and child.
The pieces played with shape, structure, and expectations. But, most importantly, they brought chikankari, an intricate and delicate hand-stitching embroidery technique originating in India, to the forefront of couture.
The pieces featuring this elaborate technique were hand-embroidered by the women of Mijwan Welfare Society, a partner organization of the Share & Care Foundation, with one piece taking over 11 months to complete.
A fashion breakthrough funded by donors like you
The Mijwan Welfare Society, led by Shabana Azmi, cultivates livelihood skills and opportunities for women in two districts of Uttar Pradesh, India, through their “Samridhi” initiative. Rural women are disproportionately affected by poverty and gender discrimination when compared to their rural men or urban women counterparts. In its first year, 656 women benefited from the program, improving their business skills and learning intricate stitching and embroidery work.
Through our Womens Empowerment (WE) initiative, chaired by Dr. Ketki Shah, the Share and Care Foundation has partnered with the Mijwan Welfare Society for years, providing resources, equipment, and structural stability that have allowed the center to thrive and scale to what it is today.
The pink and gossamer pieces in this collection not only carry Malhotra’s story and vision across the runway. They tell the stories of each of the women in rural India who hand-stitched them using a technique they learned to reach financial independence: stories of resilience, ambition, and self-belief.
And they carried the stories of donors like you who helped make the center in Mijwan possible.
This is what makes the Share & Care Foundation approach so special. Your dollars do not disappear into a fundraising void. They are touching thousands of real lives in India across 12 distinct programs, partnering with countless NGOs who know exactly what their communities need.
