As my Leadership in Action project draws to an end, I finally had the opportunity to visit Swara, the enterprise that runs the CraftHER programme. Swara is a fashion brand focussed on sustainable fashion that supports the tailoring and fabric-dyeing communities it works with. Our task this week was to design and launch a fashion collection – and this gave us the chance to work with an incredibly skilled and friendly team of tailors at Swara.

Designing a fashion collection with my fellow scholars was a fun and hands-on way of learning the process of product design. We started by considering who our target customer would be, which I found quite difficult because the only clothes I had made or upcycled in the past (though I had not made many) had been designed for me. Nevertheless, after spending a while in discussion, we settled on a customer with an active work and social life, and a close-knit friendship group. In turn, this allowed us to describe what functions we wanted to highlight in our items, in order to make the collection cohesive. We all had the opportunity to design a piece each: I valued the creative control, and I love the different looks we all produced.

On Tuesday, we started working with the Swara tailors, and I really enjoyed seeing their process of making clothes. However, when it came to explain our designs, the language and cultural barrier sometimes made it difficult, since we had been inspired by clothes worn in England that they might not have been familiar with. For this reason, I made a few adaptions to my design, so that it would be more similar to what they have made in the past, and I love the blend of styles it produced.

Another challenge was the limited time frame. On one hand, we were balancing our designing at Swara with our other mini-consulting work (how to make more people aware of the Leadership in Action project at Swara), and our personal project work. In addition, the tailoring unit is very small (only three women) and everything is made by hand. However, over the course of the week, this helped me to appreciate the quality of the clothes, and that by prioritising quality over efficiency, we can make clothes that will exist – and we’ll wear – for years to come.

Producing a piece of clothing with a tailor was an incredible way to connect without a shared language. The tailors were excited to share their skills with us and to learn how to make new types of clothing. In turn, I was so grateful to be able to work with them and observe their technique and expertise. At the end of it all, to be able to produce something together was an wonderful experience of connecting across cultures and languages.

This weekend, we have travelled to Vagamon to take part in a final reflection before the programme finishes on Tuesday. I have had a brilliant time so far, and though I am excited to return home and move on to new things, I will be sad to leave Kerala and the work we have done here, and I hope to return one day.