“Melbourne, we’ve arrived”: Indian Australian SMEs make their mark at Melbourne Fashion Week

“Melbourne, we’ve arrived!”

For Punar founder Priya Ravindra, the inaugural Indian Edit at Melbourne Fashion Week was about more than putting Indian designs on display. It was a declaration that South Asian fashion deserved a place on the city’s mainstream fashion calendar.

“You’ve seen us during weddings and festivals in our colourful things, and now we are here at Fashion Week,” Ravindra told the audience. “And guess what? We’ll be coming back again, and again, and again. That’s the plan.”

The sold-out showcase brought together four women-led businesses — Meetali Jain of Biba Australia, Ayushi Dixit of Paaro Couture, Amarjeet Kaur Sharma of Kulture by K, and Priya Ravindra of Punar — for a panel discussion and fashion showcase celebrating Indian design, textiles and entrepreneurship.

Co-organised by Shaadis And More, founded by Prerna Karnani, and Asian Australian Alliance, co-founded by Molina Asthana, the event offered a platform for businesses drawing on Indian heritage while building their place in Australia’s fashion and retail landscape.

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“As someone who is constantly living between two worlds and two cultures, having the two combine on a platform like Melbourne Fashion Week that celebrates art, culture and craftsmanship in all its glorious forms, is very fulfilling,” Karnani told SmartCompany.

A growing diaspora and a market ready for more

The timing is significant. Australia’s Indian community has grown substantially over the past two decades, bringing with it a wider audience for businesses that connect cultural identity with contemporary consumer tastes.

For many Indian Australians, clothing is closely tied to family, cultural identity and celebration. But the businesses represented at the Indian Edit are challenging the idea that traditional Indian garments belong only at festivals, weddings or other special occasions.

Jain and Dixit said one of the industry’s opportunities was to make Indian clothing accessible to customers who might not travel to India to shop, while introducing its fabrics and craftsmanship to people from other cultural backgrounds.

Jain, whose business opened a store in Westfield Fountain Gate in Victoria’s Narre Warren this year, described the process of building a retail business without an established roadmap for the type of Indian fashion offering she wanted to bring to Australian shopping centres.

“We had no roadmap of the big brands, the retail big brands in any of the shopping centres. So we had to start from scratch,” she said.

Finding the right retail space, identifying an audience and meeting the expectations of a major shopping centre were among the early challenges. The business needed to demonstrate that Indian fashion could appeal to customers looking for more than traditional occasion wear.

The vision, Jain explained, was to make Indian clothing part of everyday life.

“Indian clothes shouldn’t be worn on a special occasion,” she said. “Instead, it’s an everyday style for many of us, and we want many other cultures to explore us for the fabric, for the craftsmanship, for the cotton, for the silk, for everything that we stand for.”

A mother’s sewing machine becomes a daughter’s inspiration

For Sharma, the founder of Kulture by K, the story began long before the label launched this year. It began in India with her mother Sheila Devi, who worked with a sewing machine and a wardrobe full of brocade fabric.

“I grew up in a household of fabrics. I grew up wearing designs made by my mom,” Sharma said.

As a child, she recalled wanting to buy ready-made clothing rather than wear the garments her mother made. Over time, however, she came to appreciate the skill and value behind handmade fashion.

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“But now I see the value of, you know, something which is handmade,” she said.

That appreciation has become central to Kulture by K, the fashion label Sharma established with her daughter Kheyaira.

The mother-daughter duo recognised a gap in the market for South Asian occasion wear that felt contemporary without losing its connection to traditional craftsmanship. Their response was to create a label that draws on Indian fabrics, embroidery and artisanal techniques for a new generation of consumers.

The brand’s collections have included Banarasi brocade silk and velvet featuring intricate hand-embroidered dabka work, with an emphasis on limited production runs and inclusive sizing.

For Sharma, the business is also a continuation of a family legacy. Her mother spent years designing clothes and teaching young army wives sewing skills that could help them become financially independent.

“My story was of my mom, her sewing machine, and a wardrobe full of brocade fabric,” Sharma said. “So this is where it began, and we are taking it forward.”

Her experience speaks to a broader challenge facing culturally distinctive businesses: how to build a brand around a specific heritage without assuming that its audience is too small to sustain a commercial venture.

Sharma’s advice to aspiring founders was to resist the temptation to dismiss an idea because it feels niche.

“If you’re thinking that your story is too niche, don’t think too much. Go for it. Build your story in your own voice, in your own authentic voice. And this world is here to listen to you.”

Punar’s push to put India’s textile makers back in the spotlight

While the fashion showcase highlighted garments, Ravindra’s contribution brought the conversation back to the materials, makers and production processes behind Indian design.

Her business Punar takes its name from a Sanskrit word meaning “once again” and focuses on giving discarded textiles a second life through products including tea towels, tote bags, kitchen linen and wall art.

An engineer by education, Ravindra said her interest in the environmental effects of consumption began during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she started questioning what happened to the clothes she was buying.

“It all started during the pandemic because I kept buying clothes, as one does, right? But the engineer in me got curious and started wondering, where is all this ending up?” she said.

That question helped shape Punar’s approach to sustainability and women’s economic participation. The business works with women-led enterprises and artisans in India, connecting customers in Australia with textile products that draw on traditional skills and more considered production.

For Ravindra, the challenge is not simply to sell products made in India, but to bring the stories of the people who create them into the conversation.

“Indian art, textile artistry, or clothes made in India, we already know for hundreds of years it has been adored all around the world,” she said.

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“Right now, it’s time for a little reset, as I call it, which is bringing back the stories of the makers and also the materials, and putting it on a global stage.”

That distinction matters in an industry where consumers can easily see a finished product without knowing who made it, which materials were used, or how traditional skills were sustained.

The case for global recognition

As Ravindra noted, Indian fashion has never existed in isolation from the global fashion landscape.

From intricate embroidery and handwoven textiles to jewellery and leatherwork, Indian craftsmanship has influenced styles worn around the world for generations. Yet the origins of these designs are not always acknowledged when they appear on international runways or are repackaged as global trends.

Asthana told SmartCompany the event grew out of a desire to close that gap at Melbourne Fashion Week.

“Indian craftsmanship, designs and innovations are very much part of the fashion industry worldwide, but my desire is to see it credited to its origins in India, particularly for MFW, as it was a glaring gap for a city that takes pride in its multicultural heritage and that many Indians call home,” she said.

Case in point: in 2025, Italian luxury fashion house Prada faced backlash after showcasing leather sandals resembling India’s traditional Kolhapuri chappals at Milan Fashion Week without initially acknowledging their Indian origins.

The brand subsequently recognised that the designs were inspired by traditional Indian handcrafted footwear, prompting renewed debate about cultural credit, artisan livelihoods and who benefits financially when heritage craftsmanship enters the luxury market.

The same year, a viral social media trend dubbed the “Scandinavian scarf” drew comparisons to the Indian dupatta, with critics questioning why a familiar South Asian styling tradition was being presented under a new, European-sounding name.

In March 2026, Ralph Lauren also faced criticism after featuring jhumka-style earrings in its Paris Fashion Week collection, with the accessories reportedly described as “vintage” rather than credited for their South Asian heritage.

Most recently, New York-based fashion brand JW PEI faced significant backlash from users online after labelling a traditional, pre-draped saree style on its website as “Botanical Embellished Draped Overlay Maxi Dress”.

A permanent Melbourne Fashion Week fixture?

For Asthana, the response to the Indian Edit reflected how much the event meant to its audience.

“No wonder the response has been overwhelming because, like for me, hopefully for others too, it is a coming-of-age moment for Indian fashion’s deep links with our identity and culture.”

So does this mean Melbourne Fashion Week will see the Indian Edit return in next year’s iteration?

Karnani is hopeful.

“We are very excited for the future of the Indian Edit in coming years,” she said.

SmartCompany contacted Melbourne Fashion Week for comment on The Indian Edit’s future but did not receive a response at the time of publication.