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THE SALWAR PROJECT
Long before fashion renamed its forms “harem,” “genie,” or “balloon” pants, the salwar carried knowledge about climate, movement, labor, and regional identity.
The Salwar Project is The Artisan Archive’s research and design initiative tracing the many lives of this garment—from the borderlands and communities that shaped its forms to the contemporary fashion systems that detach the silhouette from its origins.
The problem is not that clothing travels. Garments have always moved through trade, migration, marriage, conquest, cinema, imitation, and the ordinary intimacy of borrowing from another person’s wardrobe. The problem begins when fashion recognizes only one moment in that journey: when an inherited silhouette reaches a luxury runway and is declared new.
The salwar has repeatedly been treated as anonymous volume—renamed” “Aladdin,” “genie,” or “balloon” pants—while the people, places, and material systems that shaped related forms are rendered peripheral.
The Salwar Project asks what changes when the garment is returned to its names, geographies, and relationships.
A Silhouette is a record
A silhouette is not merely decorative. It determines how a person walks, works, sits, rides, or moves through heat. It reflects the width and weight of a cloth, the availability of material, and the labor required to cut, distribute, and stitch it. Through archival research, construction studies, and material experimentation, we are examining how different regional salwar formed.
The afghani salwar
What is commonly sold as an “Afghani salwar” is not one uniform or historically fixed Afghan garment. It is a contemporary category encompassing several fuller trouser traditions found across Afghanistan and its surrounding regions.
In its most voluminous forms, the fabric expands and collapses around the leg, creating shape without gripping the body. The silhouette accommodates walking, riding, working, squatting, and sitting cross-legged.
The Pathani Salwar
The Pathani salwar offers a more controlled expression of fullness, often organized through inward pleating and paired with a longer kameez.
Its history reflects movement across Afghanistan, present-day Pakistan, Punjab, and the wider borderlands rather than one bounded national costume. Its construction demonstrates how garments evolve through cultural exchange, migration, and adaptation.
The Patiala Salwar
The Patiala salwar is defined by abundance.
Deep folds fan from the waist and narrow toward the ankle, requiring significant cloth and the careful distribution of volume. The Patiala Salwar is also known as the “Pattian Walee Salwar”, or the ‘salwar with folds/pleats’. It originated in the city of Patiala, and is said to have been commissioned by Maharaja Bhupinder Singh. Known for his extravagance, he added additional pleating to the salwar to give it excessive volume.
What we are doing
Researching the Lineage
Building a written and visual archive of salwar forms, while resisting the idea that garments conform neatly to contemporary national borders. Documenting how volume, gathering, pleating, taper, waistband construction, rise, and ankle treatment distinguish and connect Afghani, Pathani, and Patiala forms.
Testing the Material
Studying how the density, weight, width, and construction of cotton alter the final garment. Fabric is not simply placed into a pre-existing design. It actively determines how that design falls, moves, and holds its shape.
Designing Through Relationship
Connecting the final silhouette to the farmers, spinners, weavers, pattern-makers, and garment workers whose knowledge and labor make it possible. Credit is the minimum. Relationship is the harder standard.
READ THE RESEARCH
The Many Lives of the Salwar: The Garment Beneath the Trend
Long before fashion called them harem, genie, or balloon pants, the salwar moved through empires, borderlands, and family wardrobes.
What disappears when a living garment becomes a trend?
SEED, STRING, SILHOUETTE
The Salwar Project is the third chapter of The Artisan Archive’s first collection.