Textile Conversations

Mamatha GPK is a textile engineer and educator currently as a Department Lead at the Pearl Academy- School of Business working at the intersection of fashion, textile chemistry, and sustainable material innovation. With an ongoing PhD in Textile Technology, her work explores Indian fabrics through weaving, dyeing, and printing traditions, with a strong focus on green synthesis and eco-conscious practices.

She regularly conducts workshops, lectures, and seminars, translating complex textile processes into engaging, hands-on learning experiences with names like Puravankara, IIT Delhi, Centre of Excellence- Textile/Fashion- Coimbatore. Her work in bridging heritage techniques with contemporary design and material thinking. She has authored articles, research papers, and book chapters, Textile Value Chain, Intech Open and more, and has guided projects centered on textile chemistry and sustainable textiles for Visvesvaraya Technological University reflecting her commitment to making textile knowledge both relevant and impactful.

Vaishnavi Kambadur is a curator and an educator. She holds an MA in Fashion Studies from Parsons School of Design, New York, and a Bachelor in Knitwear Design from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, New Delhi. Her research investigates the meaning of motif-making in textiles, addressing its complexities around labour, culture, and fashion theory. She was part of the founding team at MAP and worked as an Assistant Curator for four years. 

A 2025 travel grantee at the CIMAM conference in Torino, Italy, she most recently contributed as a curatorial consultant to Kala Hubba 2026, the public arts project under BLR Hubba. She now balances her practice with a teaching role at Pearl Academy, Bengaluru, remaining committed to evolving in dialogue with the needs of a new generation.

Saanj Jain is a designer based in Bangalore. Her practice is rooted in sustainability, research, and community-based design around India. She has completed a fellowship focused on sustainable fashion, where she explored natural dyeing techniques, Dabu printing, and worked closely with the Black Wool Kuruba community to help them develop a product line. 

Alongside this, she is currently collaborating with PARI (People’s Archive of Rural India), writing an article that documents and highlight the lives and work of rural artisans. 

Parallel to her research and writing, she is working on cultivating a brand that reflects these values centred on ethical production, craftsmanship, and storytelling through textiles.

Gunjan Pramod is an artist and textile practitioner from Bangarpet, a small town in Karnataka. She completed her Bachelor’s degree from Bengaluru School of Visual Arts, specialising in Applied Arts.

Her practice is rooted in understanding the materiality of fabric and its histories. Gunjan works with natural dyes, textile processes, and experiments with stop-motion animation as a medium of storytelling.

She also enjoys altering and creating images drawn from her own context while telling stories that reflect memory, place, and lived experiences. She is currently exploring ways to combine textile, embroidery, folk imagery, and stop-motion animation to build layered visual narratives.

Poonam Pandit is a textile designer, researcher, artist, and founder of Kalakar, a label working with Goa’s weaving traditions. 

With over 25 years of experience spanning design, academia, artisan and craft cluster engagement, government and NGO collaborations, home furnishings export, and high-fashion buying and liaison, her work bridges traditional practices and contemporary design. More recently, as a consultant, she headed the regional chapter of the Centre of Excellence for Khadi and conducted archival research on historical and contemporary textiles and costumes from the Haveli Collection at the Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru.

Niveditha Padmanabhan is a textile and archival researcher whose practice focuses on sustainability, craft knowledge systems, and material culture. A graduate of NIFT Mumbai in Textile Design, her work spans textile archives and field-based research. She has worked extensively with historical textiles, documenting and studying objects while exploring their technical, cultural, and environmental contexts. Her research also extends to on-ground studies of textile ecologies, including the relationships between temple traditions, weaving communities, and the cultural landscapes that sustain these practices.

Alongside her research work, Niveditha engages with museums on sustainability initiatives within the cultural sector and collaborates with Fashion Revolution India on research and public engagement around responsible fashion systems. Her research also examines the intersections of ecology, craft practices, and climate within textile traditions.

Her practice brings together archival research, storytelling, and public dialogue to make textile histories more accessible while examining how traditional knowledge systems continue to inform contemporary design and sustainability conversations.