Maya: Love, Magic, and the Making of Ashaki’s Atelier
At Ashaki, every garment begins with a story. But in our Atelier, that story deepens, layered with intricate threadwork, rare details, and the luxury of time.
Atshaki begins every piece with a story. A story that is part of our founders' path to healing, their desire to become whole, that ever-evolving tug with time, backwards and forwards. In this first collection, Future Eutopia, we delve into the past through memory.
In efforts to have more art and beauty in the world. Ashaki offers our story and collection in two paths, “Sanctum” and “Atelier”. In Sanctum, our offerings are presented in one state, with a single design. However, Atelier offers you two options for the same garment, with and without embroidery, pure silhouettes and embroidered masterpieces. The collection in Atelier is called Maya. Maya means magic in Sanskrit, and in Bangla it means deep love and tenderness, often associated with the love of a mother. We wanted to focus our art and core message of Maya to our customers. Maya towards self is critical to healing and becoming whole.
The Atelier is both accessible for pure everyday refinement or richly embroidered pieces at the height of artisan luxury. The Pure silhouettes stand in their own light, anchored to our message of self, tender, bold, motherly love, precise in proportion and unrivaled in construction. The embroidered masterpieces are their reflection with a dust of magic over them.
Each embroidered garment in the Atelier is a living archive of India’s most intricate handwork traditions. Resham silk threads bring a luminous sheen to motifs, while Aari embroidery, the royal chain stitch worked with a hooked needle, creates precision and ornate detailing. Phanda knots, delicate and refined, add subtle texture, and Bharai fills floral and geometric forms with dense stitches that give depth and volume. Layered upon this is Moti Ka Kaam, the painstaking hand-placement of beads and pearls, once reserved for royalty and still synonymous with celebration. Together, these techniques, known collectively under the cultural umbrella of Bharat embroidery, require countless hours of artisanal labor and generational skill, transforming each piece into a work of wearable art and justifying its place at the highest tier of Ashaki’s Atelier.
The Atelier is an invitation to move between simplicity and grandeur. Between pure silhouette and embroidered brilliance. Yet always anchored in the story of Maya, deep, tender motherly love, and magic. Every piece is a mirror of becoming, created not only to adorn but to mend. To remind us that beauty is power, a power that can be kindly directed towards self, to guide lasting healing. In Ashaki’s vision, wholeness is not a destination but a practice, stitched into every seam, every knot, every bead. To wear these garments is to carry both art and restoration, a wholeness made visible.