Forty years behind one counter

Since 1986, our founder — A.K. Khanna — has run a traditional ethnic wear shop in the small town of Garhshankar, Punjab by the name of "A. K. Emporium". Forty years behind that counter taught him two things. First: the talented tailors and artisans of his pind can stitch anything — heirloom Banarasi blouses, modern front-slit Anarkalis, silhouettes loved by daughters and grandmothers alike. Second: none of that skill matters if the outfit is pulled off a rack in someone else's size.

At sixty, instead of winding the dukaan down, he decided to open it up. From My Pind is his effort to give the craftspeople of his village a modern inventory — contemporary fashion and silhouettes that speak to the newer generation without losing the older one — and to take their work beyond the town's main bazaar, to anyone with a WhatsApp number.

His plan is deliberately small, and that's the point. No inventory racks, no warehouse, no "runs small" reviews — because in his experience, size charts are where good fitting goes to die. A chart asks you to approximate yourself; a tailor measures you. So every piece is cut to order, to your measurements, the way his shop has fitted customers for four decades. When you enquire, a person answers. When you order, a person cuts the cloth. And when it arrives, it fits — because it was never made for anyone else.

Four decades of sourcing for the shop means the fabric relationships came with him: Banarasi from Varanasi's brocade looms, Kanjivaram from Kanchipuram, Chanderi from Madhya Pradesh, and khadi that carries a century of meaning in every metre. You can read where each one comes from — and what it asks of you — in our Fabric Guide.