Sindhu Varagani, winner of the 2019 Black Apple Award for Favorite Designer, showcases her passion for versatility and innovation in fashion design. 

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ETHWES

ETHWES founder and lead designer Sindhu Varagani has fused various fabrics and dyeing methods unique to India’s grassroots fashion with contemporary American style to create beautiful clothing for work, pleasure and everything in-between. 

Varagani employs ikat, a fabric characterized by its unique blurred patterns that is made from tie-dyed yarn woven on a manually run handloom. She also uses kalamkari, which is a fabric that has been hand-painted or printed with natural dyes to create intricate patterns. 

“My move to America was an eye-opener; the speedy fashion changes from country to country and the contrast between [the] tone of fashion makes me feel mesmerized. It made me feel like I had been transported into a parallel universe. ETHWES perfectly brings out the beauty of these two distinct worlds combined as one.”

// ETHWES.COM

IG // @ETHWESBYSINDHUVARAGANI