The Naga shawl economy: how a wedding garment became a global fashion line
Naga weavers are selling shawls to Milan and Manhattan — and arguing about who owns the designs.
The shawls of the Naga tribes — each pattern a language of clan and achievement — are now selling to Milan and Manhattan, carried there by a cooperative of weavers and a design house in Delhi.
The trade has lifted loom incomes, but it has also raised hard questions: which designs belong to which tribe, and who may license them?
A design registry, managed by the tribes themselves, is the emerging answer.