A 400-year-old craft,kept young formore than 7 winters.
Riwaayat ae Lucknow is a small, stubborn, seven-year-old love letter to chikankari — written in white thread, read by fifty thousand people on Instagram.
— the shadow-work bakhiya, mid-stitch
The Craft
Chikankari —
embroidery as whisper.
Legend credits Empress Nur Jahan with bringing chikankari to the Mughal courts; Lucknow's nawabs made it their own. For four centuries, the old city has stitched white thread onto white mulmul — a shadow of embroidery you feel before you see.
Over thirty-two stitches make up the vocabulary: the back-stitched shadow of bakhiya, the millet-grain knots of phanda and murri, the light-letting lattice of jaali. Today the craft carries a Geographical Indication tag — and, in our workshop, the same unhurried hands.
400+
years of craft
32
stitches
GI
tagged, Lucknow
— a karigar of the old city, at her adda
2019 — 2026
Seven years, stitch by stitch.
A phone camera & a dream
The first kurta was photographed at home and posted to Instagram. No studio, no team — just a love for the craft Lucknow raised us on.
The first hundred orders
DMs turned into parcels. Every order was packed by hand, with a handwritten note tucked inside — a habit we never gave up.
Straight to the karigars
We began working directly with artisan clusters in the old city, so every rupee travels shorter distances and reaches the hands that stitch.
50,000 of you
Our Instagram family crossed fifty thousand. What started as a page became a community that votes on colours, names designs, and waits for drops.
A home of our own
This website. Seven years of riwaayat, finally stitched into a space we own — with a full shop on its way.
Tradition isn't what gets left behind. It's what we choose to carry — thread by thread, order by order, year by year.