Here Heritage Meets Contemporary – Master How to Modernize Traditional Craft with Parul University!

India’s craft is mesmerisingly vast, and it can be treated as a source of inspiration in today’s times. Anindita Sardar from Titan Company deliberated that the real opportunity lies in evolving the heritage, keeping the true essence but modernizing a new idea. Here’s how designers or fashion enthusiasts can modernize traditional craft, keeping the roots as they are!

Sardar warned against “museumifying” craft, treating traditional techniques as historical objects to be displayed rather than living practices that can grow. A related trap is tying a craft only to specific occasions or traditional forms, which can make it feel irrelevant to younger consumers. When a craft is frozen, it slowly loses its audience. When it is allowed to live and evolve, it stays connected to the people who might actually wear and buy it.

One of the session’s sharpest points challenged the idea of treating “Indian” as one visual style. India has diversity, different communities, textiles, crafts, techniques, and enormous cultural histories. Instead of tweaking it under one generic Indian look, designers can explore regionally driven identities and can explore them for the current audiences. Hence, diversity is not a complication; it is a near-limitless well of distinctive design material.

Sardar urged designers to move past the narrow idea of “ethnic luxury,” where Indian craft is presented only as traditional or ceremonial. But she was equally clear about the opposite error: simply reproducing European luxury aesthetics using Indian materials. The real opportunity sits between these extremes, creating contemporary products with their own identity that remain genuinely connected to India’s cultural and craft heritage. India already has the essential raw material, skilled artisans, textiles, techniques, and centuries of knowledge; the task is to organise it into contemporary design languages that speak to both Indian and international consumers.

Modernising craft does not mean abandoning tradition; it means evolving its expression. Traditional techniques can be retained while colours, silhouettes, combinations, and applications change to suit contemporary requirements.

Sardar shared examples from Taneira’s work with textile traditions such as Murshidabad silk, Banaras, and Kanchipuram, where the goal was not to copy heritage designs exactly but to reinterpret them with new palettes and forms. She cited the example of a collection whose contemporary interpretation of traditional craft drew a strong customer response and was developed through multiple iterations, proof that craft stays commercially relevant when it is allowed to evolve.

From reimagining traditional craft to creating contemporary fashion, students at Parul University’s Faculty of Design can develop their creative and commercial skills through the B.Des in Fashion Design and Technology, Diploma in Fashion Design & Technology, Certificate Program in Fashion Designing, and M.Des in Fashion Merchandising.

This approach benefits more than the balance sheet. When designers introduce new applications and combinations, artisans themselves develop new skills and gain exposure to different forms of production. Contemporarization, done well, keeps craft communities connected to changing markets and keeps traditional techniques alive by making them relevant to new generations. Heritage, treated as a living source rather than a fixed template, becomes a renewable resource.