We were thrilled to have Jamie Larson of Rural Intelligence - Chronogram visit our new store in Rhinebeck, NY and sit down with our founder and designer, Bianca Kuttickattu. Here's the story behind the shop, the quilts and the people who make every piece...
What is a kantha quilt?
A kantha quilt is a patchwork of reused fabric layers held together with a hand-sewn running stitch. As Bianca tells it, traditionally one began with a walk: the women making it went from house to house in the village, asking for scraps of fabric.
Those scraps were gathered into layers and stitched by hand. The finished quilt was usually a gift for a wedding, a christening or a birthday. The tradition is thousands of years old, and most of the quilts we work with come from Bengal.
A third life for vintage Indian textiles
Every Namai jacket is the third life of its fabric. The quilts travel from Bengal through Calcutta to our suppliers in Delhi and Jaipur. By the time Bianca buys one, it has already been made from reused cloth and lived in as a quilt.
"The jackets are literally the third life cycle of these fabrics," she told Chronogram.
Bianca first found kantha quilts on Etsy a few years ago, "while I was stuck in my boring corporate job." She bought them for herself and gave them to friends. "They just brought me so much joy and gave me a feeling of connectedness to my Indian roots, which I hadn't really grown up with," she says.
The love of secondhand runs deeper. "I like things that have a story," she says. "I grew up wearing second-hand clothes because that's what we could afford. I was used to the idea that what I was wearing had a life before I had it."
That history is the point. "I love the idea that we're creating objects that have meaning, and that the new owner of them will create more meaning and memories with them," Bianca says. "So they're just going to become richer over time and more special."
Reversible kantha jackets: the Ladhiya and the Kaira
Our jackets are loose, bold and reversible, built to fit many bodies and any gender. Bianca trained in fashion in London and Paris, then spent years designing luxury footwear in London, Sweden and, from 2012, New York.
That work was measured in millimeters. "I spent hours of my day staring at a model's foot, perfecting the fit," she says. For Namai she wanted the opposite: "something more expansive that fit a lot of people and wasn't one gender, and just had really generous pockets and a generous fit," with "a graphic and bold look."
Our best sellers are the Ladhiya jacket and the cropped Kaira jacket. Both have been refined slowly through customer feedback and from watching how they fit people at markets. Each one has:
- A loose, one-size-fits-most cut
- A mandarin collar and coconut-shell buttons
- Full reversibility, with cotton bias binding on one side that picks out the seams
The pattern stays the same; the quilt makes every jacket new. "Because the quilts are so unique and continually different, the jackets are just endlessly new and different," Bianca says. No two are alike.
Hand-knit sweaters made from recycled silk saris
Each Namai sweater is hand-knit from six recycled silk saris, and they've become one of our most popular pieces this year. The workshop sorts the saris into color combinations, tears them into strips and winds the strips into balls of "sari wool." Women then knit each sweater by hand.
"Each one is like a total work of art and completely one of a kind," Bianca says.
Sustainable fashion, few shapes, many hands
We keep our designs few on purpose, because it's better for the artisans who make them. "Sustainability for me is about using recycled fabrics," Bianca says, "but it's also about creating conditions that are beneficial for the workshops that I collaborate with." An artisan paid by the piece or by the hour does better making a shape she has made many times, so we don't add new designs for the sake of it.
Our main workshop is in Jaipur. In 2020, its owner made our first ten jackets from a small storefront on a busy road outside the city, with no international clients. Through our partnership, he has since built a four-story factory that employs many people.
"It's been amazing growing together with someone and just creating such a meaningful partnership," Bianca says.
Visit Namai in Rhinebeck, NY
Come try on a kantha jacket at our shop at 11 West Market Street, Rhinebeck, NY, open since September 12. Then join us for our official opening celebration on Friday, November 13 at 5-8pm We'd love to meet you, show you this season's quilts and sari sweaters, and toast the newest chapter in our story.
Read the full feature
Read Jamie Larson's full article, "Namai Opens First Retail Shop in Rhinebeck: Jackets Made from Traditional Indian Quilts and Sweaters Knit from Saris," on Rural Intelligence, published October 26, 2026. Photography by Abigail Fenton.
