payal jain

Payal Jain was born in Delhi, where she continues to live and work. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising (FIDM) in the USA, she returned to India to build a career at a time when the fashion industry was in its early stages. Today, she is recognized as one of India’s leading designers and sustainability advocates.

Over the past three decades, Jain’s eponymous brand has become synonymous with timeless fashion, blending India’s rich textile heritage with contemporary design. Her work is renowned for integrating handloom textiles, hand block prints, and indigenous embroideries, creating unique pieces that celebrate traditional craftsmanship in modern silhouettes. Jain’s textile art shows have received global acclaim, highlighting her innovative approach to preserving and showcasing India’s heritage while pushing the boundaries of fashion design.

About The Work

Courtesy of the artist, New Delhi

Payal Jain is a well-known fashion designer based in New Delhi who has been creating collections of garments in a variety of styles for thirty years. The works in the exhibition are only four examples from a much larger body of work Jain created entitled “Soul of a Woman” in order to commemorate her three decades of fashion, allowing herself to experiment with a more abstract language for the occasion. She limits herself to only a few materials, predominantly cotton and repurposed yarn, and a single color, ivory, so as to give emphasis to the forms themselves, many of which only barely resemble anything that could be said to be “clothing.” Both free-standing and suspended, the pieces on display have the human body as their starting point but Jain also allows herself to explore and exploit the qualities of her materials, abandoning functionality completely and venturing into the territory of Fiber Art.