Zardozi, the Ancient Art of Metal Thread Embroidery

A single piece of Zardozi embroidery can take an artisan a minimum of 40 hours to complete. 

Forty hours of sitting cross-legged around a wooden frame called an adda. Forty hours of threading metal wire through silk with a hooked needle. Forty hours of building patterns so intricate they catch light like architecture.

Machines can’t do this work. They’ve tried. The three-dimensional texture, the raised surfaces, the way real Zardozi feels substantial under your fingers? That requires human hands, human judgement, and human patience.

This is what luxury sustainable fashion actually looks like: slow, deliberate, irreplaceable.

Gold Embroidery That Dressed Emperors

The word Zardozi comes from two Persian terms: zar (gold) and dozi (embroidery). Gold embroidery. 

Originally, artisans used real gold and silver threads, real pearls, and precious stones. This wasn’t decoration. It was wearable wealth.

Zardozi flourished in the Mughal courts of 17th-century India. 

Emperor Akbar, a passionate patron of the arts, commissioned Zardozi for everything: royal garments, ceremonial tents, sword scabbards, even elephant trappings. Workshops called karkhanas hummed with master craftsmen creating metal-threaded masterpieces.

Then came decline. When Emperor Aurangzeb stopped royal patronage, artisans scattered. Gold and silver were too expensive to work with without imperial funding. The craft that dressed emperors nearly vanished. Many artisans migrated from Delhi to Lucknow, Bhopal, and other cities, taking their knowledge with them.

How Zardozi Almost Died

Ritu Kumar, the renowned Indian fashion designer credited with reviving Zardozi, describes what she found in the 1960s:

 “I did a project of Zardozi revival at a time when it wasn’t available in the country and the art had almost died. And bridal wear was nothing but traditional attires. 

You would get bandhini sarees in Rajasthan, gota work in Punjab, and of course the Benarasi sarees in Varanasi. Apart from a smattering of clothing and textiles, there was not much available.”

She encountered out-of-work craftsmen sitting idle whilst their skills disappeared. The few Zardozi pieces that existed were of inferior quality or old family heirlooms passed down through generations. The craft was dying not from lack of beauty, but from lack of market.

This is the reality of traditional embroidery and handcrafted fashion: without patronage, even ancient arts vanish. Skills that took centuries to perfect can disappear in a single generation if nobody values them enough to pay for them.

How Zardozi Is Actually Made

Image: Mon Ami Foundation 

The process hasn’t changed in centuries. First, the design is traced onto butter paper. Artisans poke needle holes along the pattern lines. The paper is laid on fabric (usually silk, velvet, or satin), and a mixture of kerosene and colour is dabbed through the holes, transferring the design.

The fabric is stretched taut on the wooden adda frame. Then craftsmen sit around it, working simultaneously on different sections. They use a hooked needle called an aari, pulling metallic threads, sequins, beads, and sometimes semi-precious stones through the fabric from underneath.

Every element is placed by hand. The metal wires (salma), the stars (sitaara), the coiled threads (dabka), the tiny sequins. Each one positioned, secured, checked. This is why Zardozi has texture and weight. It’s genuinely three-dimensional. You can feel the raised patterns.

Today, artisans mostly use copper wire with gold or silver polish instead of pure precious metals. The technique remains identical. The skill required? Exactly the same.

Why Perfect Symmetry Is Actually a Red Flag

Here’s how to spot real Zardozi: look for tiny irregularities. Slight variations in stitch tension. Metal threads that catch light at slightly different angles. Patterns that are beautiful but not robotically perfect.

These natural imperfections are proof of hand work. Six different artisans might work on a single piece, each with slightly different hand pressure, rhythm, tension. The variations are subtle but they’re there. This is sustainable clothing at its most authentic.

Machine embroidery can mimic the look of Zardozi, sort of. But it can’t replicate the dimensionality, the way light moves across genuine metal thread, the tactile richness. And it certainly can’t create the subtle imperfections that prove human authorship.

When you run your fingers over authentic Zardozi, you’re touching the evidence of someone’s commitment to beauty. Those tiny irregularities aren’t flaws. They’re signatures.

Slow Fashion Clothing in a Fast Fashion World

Zardozi faces the same challenge as every traditional craft: time. In a world addicted to fast fashion, around 100 hours per piece seems absurd. Machines can produce embroidered fabric in minutes. Why wait weeks?

Because that machine-made piece won’t last. It won’t develop character. It won’t carry anyone’s story. And producing it probably poisoned a river somewhere.

Zardozi artisans face difficult working conditions. They sit hunched for hours, straining their eyes on intricate work. Many aren’t paid fairly for their skill. Younger generations leave for office jobs rather than learn the craft. The expertise, accumulated over centuries, threatens to evaporate.

This is why ethical fashion matters. When you buy authentic Zardozi, you’re not just buying embroidery. You’re voting for artisan livelihoods. You’re saying their time, skill, and cultural knowledge have value. You’re helping keep five-century-old techniques alive.

Real Luxury Takes Time

Image: Local Samosa 

We’ve been trained to think luxury means expensive logos. But traditional embroidery teaches a different definition: luxury is someone spending hours making something beautiful just for you.

True luxury sustainable fashion isn’t about price tags. It’s about the irreplaceable nature of skilled human work. A machine can replicate a pattern. It can’t replicate mastery, judgement, or the tiny adjustments a craftsperson makes as they work.

Zardozi-embroidered pieces become family heirlooms. Mothers pass them to daughters. They’re worn at weddings, celebrations, important moments. They last because they’re made to last, constructed with patience and pride.

This is what handcrafted fashion offers: not just a garment, but a relationship with the human who made it. Every stitch is evidence of someone’s decision to create beauty through skill and time.

Every Zardozi piece in our sustainable clothing collection is authentic handwork. 

When you choose Zardozi from TuDuGu, you’re participating in a craft tradition that survived the collapse of empires. You’re supporting artisans who’ve inherited techniques from their grandparents. You’re choosing slow fashion clothing that respects both the maker and the wearer.

We believe ethical fashion starts with knowing who made your clothes and ensuring they were paid properly for their skill and time. Traditional embroidery isn’t just decoration. It’s cultural heritage, artisan livelihoods, and proof that beauty doesn’t have to be fast to be valuable.

The natural imperfections in our Zardozi pieces aren’t flaws. They’re proof that someone’s hands created this. That someone chose, positioned, and secured every element with care. That this piece is genuinely one of a kind, bearing the subtle signature of its maker.

Forty hours seems like a long time to wait for embroidery. But compare it to fast fashion: made in minutes, worn twice, discarded. Which is really wasting time?

Zardozi teaches patience. It teaches us that the most beautiful things take time. That luxury isn’t about speed or quantity, but about the irreplaceable value of human skill. That when we choose handcrafted fashion over mass production, we’re choosing to honour both craft and craftsperson.

At TuDuGu, we choose to honour both. Always.