Haute couture and high jewellery with Vaishali S and Sicis Jewels
Vaishali S, a fashion house founded by Indian designer Vaishali Shadangule, presented the new Swayam collection at Paris Haute Couture Week f/w 2026-2027, a haute couture project consisting of thirty creations entirely made on the loom.
The show, presented on the opening day of the Paris haute couture week, took place at the Residence of the Ambassador of India in Paris, a setting with a strong symbolic value. Here, India's textile heritage was celebrated in the heart of the French capital, bringing to the catwalk a vision of luxury based on time, material, culture and craftsmanship.
Under the artistic direction of Marco Ferra, the collection told a path of transformation: from seed to flowering, from origin to full self-expression. The looks follow an ideal progression from Beej, the closed seed, to Mukti, the liberation and complete flowering, with Swayamprabha at the center, a symbolic figure of a light that is born of itself.
The color palette accompanies this evolution with tones that go from stone gray, ash and deep green to more intense shades such as carmine, amethyst, peacock and sapphire. The fabrics, modeled through Vaishali Shadangule's proprietary technique, take on three-dimensional shapes: bodices similar to botanical architecture, pleats that seem to open like petals, embroidered surfaces that appear to have been born directly from the material.
Each garment was made on Indian handlooms, through fourteen different weaving traditions from the subcontinent. Behind the collection is the artisan network built by the designer over twenty-five years: over 4,500 families of weavers distributed in seven Indian states. Each creation encompasses hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of hours of manual labor.
To complete the show, the models wore a selection of SICIS Jewels high jewelry. Necklaces, rings, bracelets and earrings in gold, precious stones and micromosaic dialogued with the clothes through botanical, animal, geometric and cosmic suggestions. From the Botanica, Daisy and Iris collections to Anemone, Quetzal, Papillon, Losange, Arabesque, Nebulosa and Saturno, the jewels have amplified the sculptural and symbolic dimension of the collection.
The models walked barefoot, a choice that gave the catwalk a sense of rootedness and purity. The body, the fabric, the jewel and the Indian classical music performed live have built a single sensory narrative, suspended between ritual, fashion and memory.
Vaishali Shadangule, the first woman of Indian origin to enter the official calendar of Paris Haute Couture Week in 2021, confirms with Swayam the full legitimacy of hand-woven Indian haute couture on the international scene. The collection has been recognized by the Ministry of Textiles of the Government of India and created in collaboration with the Office of the Commissioner for the Development of Handlooms.
Swayam is not just a couture collection, but a cultural statement: an invitation to consider the handloom not as a memory of the past, but as a contemporary language of the most authentic luxury, made up of technique, time, identity and beauty destined to last.
Edited by Nicole Villa, Avion Luxury Magazine
Text source and photos: Sicis Jewels Press Office
Credits photos: Jude Fotografy and Starface Agence Photo / Andy Nasta
