पहनावा और वस्त्र

PheranMen and women

A loose knee-length or ankle-length gown worn over an inner layer, cut wide enough that the arms can be withdrawn inside it and the kangri held against the body. The men's version is plainer and shorter; the women's is longer and often carries tilla embroidery at the neck, cuffs and hem. Winter pherans are wool, summer ones cotton.

किस मौके पर: Everyday, winter, and formal in its embroidered form

PootsMen and women

The inner gown worn beneath the pheran, historically of coarser cloth. The two-layer arrangement traps air, and the outer layer can be shed indoors without undressing.

किस मौके पर: Winter, under the pheran

KangriEveryone, in winter

Not a garment but worn like one: an earthenware bowl of embers in a wicker cradle of dyed willow, held under the pheran against the belly. Made chiefly at Chrar-e-Sharief and in Bandipora, and carried everywhere — to work, to the mosque, to a wedding.

किस मौके पर: October to March

TarangaMarried Kashmiri Pandit women

A stiffened cap with a long cloth tail falling down the back over the pheran, pinned in place. Worn with the dejhoor, a pair of hexagonal gold ornaments suspended from the ears on gold thread and given at marriage — the Kashmiri Pandit equivalent of the mangalsutra, and never removed.

किस मौके पर: Ceremonial and formerly everyday

KasabaMarried Kashmiri Muslim women

A turban-like headdress pinned with brooches and hung with ornaments, worn with a headscarf beneath it and, in rural forms, with a heavy silver pin. Distinct in construction from the taranga, and the clearest dress marker between the two communities.

किस मौके पर: Ceremonial and formerly everyday

Pashmina and jamawar shawlMen and women

The shawl is the outer layer of formal dress and the object a family accumulates: a kani or heavily sozni-worked piece is given at a daughter's marriage and expected to outlive the marriage.

किस मौके पर: Formal, winter, and as a marriage gift

Kashmir Pashminaजीआई टैगSrinagar and its ring of villages

Cloth hand-spun on a yinder wheel from the dehaired undercoat of Changthangi goats reared on the Ladakh plateau, then hand-woven on a pit loom. The fibre is roughly 12–16 microns, too fine and too short for a power spindle to handle without breaking, which is the whole reason the craft stayed manual. The geographical indication attaches to the hand-spinning and hand-weaving done in the valley, not to the place the fibre is grown — a distinction that matters to everybody upstream of it.

Kani shawlजीआई टैगKanihama and around Budgam

A twill-tapestry shawl woven with dozens or hundreds of small eyeless wooden bobbins — kanis — one weft line at a time, following a coded written notation called the talim that a reader chants aloud to the weaver. A full-field kani shawl can take two to three years on the loom. The talim is why the design does not have to be memorised or drawn on the warp.

Sozni embroideryजीआई टैगSrinagar, Budgam, Ganderbal

Needle embroidery in fine untwisted thread worked so tightly that the pattern reads as woven. In the do-rukha form the piece is worked to be identical on both faces, sometimes in different colourways, so the shawl has no reverse.

Kashmir hand-knotted carpetजीआई टैगSrinagar and Budgam

Silk or wool pile knotted on a vertical loom to a talim read aloud, in the Persian design vocabulary that arrived with the fifteenth-century craft migration. Knot counts are quoted per square inch and a genuine piece carries a hand-knotted, not machine-tufted, back.

Tilla doziSrinagar

Gold- or silver-coloured metal thread couched onto wool or silk in bold running scrolls, used on pheran collars and cuffs and on bridal wear. Bolder and more sparing than Awadhi zardozi, and worked without a frame in many workshops.

Crewel and chain stitchSrinagar and Budgam

Loops of worsted wool worked with an ari hook onto a cotton or jute ground, filling large areas fast. It is the furnishing craft — curtains, cushion covers, wall hangings — and the one most exposed to machine-made imitation.

NamdaSrinagar, Baramulla, Anantnag

Felted, not woven: raw wool is laid, soaked, soaped and rolled underfoot until the fibres mat into a sheet, then embroidered in chain stitch. Cheap, warm and traditionally the floor covering of an ordinary house; the craft nearly collapsed and has been the subject of a recent revival effort.

Pattu and raffalThe side valleys

Coarse hand-woven local sheep wool, made up into pherans and blankets for daily use. It is what most of the valley actually wore, as against the shawl the valley exported.