Today we’d like to introduce you to Amit & Juhi.
Hi Amit & Juhi, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
URNAM began in 2024, in Gurugram, with one machine, one master ji, one lakh rupees, and a shared conviction that Indian craft deserved better than what the market was giving it.
Juhi studied design at NIFT Delhi and spent years working as Head Designer at Salt, a fashion label she poured herself into. She understood construction, embroidery, the language of fabric. But she kept arriving at the same frustration: the market was full of clothing that called itself artisanal and delivered something that was not. Hand-embroidery used as decoration, as an afterthought, as a marketing word. She wanted to build something where the craft was the design. Not applied on top of it. Not added at the end. The design itself, beginning in the hands of an artisan before a single pattern was cut.
Amit came from a different world entirely. A BTech, then years as an Agile Program Manager at Circle K, managing complexity and systems for a living. But fashion had always sat quietly at the edge of his professional life, a genuine passion that did not yet have a home. When the two of them started talking seriously about building a brand together, something clicked into place. Juhi brought the craft knowledge and creative instinct. Amit brought the discipline, the systems thinking, and a willingness to learn anything that needed to be learned.
They started with what they had. One lakh rupees. One embroidery machine. One master ji who knew how to use it. No studio, no team, no outside money. Just the two of them, learning everything as they went.
Because the budget left no room for delegation, they did everything. Amit taught himself photography, built the website, handled marketing and sales, oversaw creative direction. Juhi managed design, operations, production, and the relationships with artisans. Every collection shot, every product listing, every campaign, every customer conversation passed through their hands. Not out of romanticism about doing it all, but because there was no other way. And somewhere in that necessity, something valuable happened. They understood every part of the business from the inside, the way you only can when you have personally done the work.
The belief that drove all of it was simple: natural fabrics only. Cotton, linen, pure wool. No polyester, ever. Ethical production, named artisans, genuine hand-embroidery. A brand they would have bought from if someone else had built it first.
Nobody had. So they built it themselves.
URNAM now ships to over 37 countries. Collections named Pareidolia, Bird Song, Plume Poetry. A small but growing community of women who dress with intention and, as the brand puts it, have nothing left to prove.
It still runs the way it started. Two people, wearing every hat, doing every step. The machine count has grown. The lakh has multiplied. The master ji is still there.
The conviction has not changed at all.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not even close.
If we are being honest, the last two years have felt less like a road and more like a river that keeps changing direction. There were stretches of clarity, and stretches where we could not see three feet ahead.
We started at home. That felt manageable. Then we moved to a basement studio, which felt like growth. A few months in, we discovered water leakage. The landlord was not easy to deal with. We had to move again, in the middle of building a brand, in the middle of managing orders, in the middle of everything. There is nothing romantic about shifting your entire studio setup twice in a year. It is just hard.
But the harder thing, honestly, was not the logistics. It was the internal work. Getting up every single morning and choosing to keep going, on days when nothing felt certain. The fear of the future does not announce itself loudly. It sits quietly at the back of everything you do. Every decision carries a small weight of “what if this does not work.” Learning to move with that, rather than waiting for it to leave, was something we had to figure out as we went.
What kept us going was simpler than any strategy. It was our customers. Every time we got stuck, something would shift. An order from someone who had been following us for months. A message from a woman who said the piece felt like it was made for her. Those moments are not small. When you are building something from almost nothing, that kind of trust is the thing that actually moves you forward. Not the plan. Not the projections. The person on the other end who believed in what you were making before you had proof that it would work.
We also came back, again and again, to something we believe quite deeply. If something is yours, you will find a way to it. And if it is not, no amount of effort will make it so. URNAM feels like ours. Not in a possessive sense, but in a dharmic one. This is the work we were supposed to do. And that belief, when everything else is uncertain, is a surprisingly steady place to stand.
We still have difficult days. That has not changed. But consistency is not the absence of difficulty. It is just the decision to show up anyway, every day, for something you believe is worth building.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
URNAM creates contemporary designer wear enriched with hand embroidery and craft surface techniques, made in breathable natural fabrics for those who dress with quiet confidence and distinctive style.
That distinction matters more than it might sound. Most brands in this space use embroidery as a finishing touch, something added at the end to justify a price point or signal craft. At URNAM, the embroidery is where the design begins. The artisan’s hand is the first creative decision, not the last. What you see on the garment is not applied on top of the fabric. It is the reason the garment exists.
We work exclusively in natural fabrics. Cotton, linen, handspun wool. No polyester, no synthetic blends, no exceptions. This is not a marketing position. It is a conviction. Natural fabrics breathe with the body, soften with wear, and age into something more personal rather than less. A piece from URNAM should feel better in three years than it does on the day you receive it. That only happens with materials that are honest.
Every collection has a name and a point of view. Pareidolia. Bird Song. Plume Poetry. Wandering Falcon. These are not decorative titles. They are the emotional territory we are working in when we design. The woman who wears URNAM is not buying a product category. She is stepping into a specific feeling, a specific way of moving through the world. The collection names are our way of making that invitation precise.
We are a made-to-order label, operating out of Gurugram, shipping to over 37 countries. Our team is small and deliberately so. Every piece passes through hands that know it. Every order is treated as if it is the only one being made that day, because in many cases, it is.
What sets us apart is something that is genuinely difficult to replicate. It is not just the craft, though the craft is real and verifiable. It is the combination of Indian hand-embroidery as the design origin, natural materials chosen with honesty, and a woman at the center who is not being sold to. She is being recognised.
Our customer is urban, educated, and at a particular point in her relationship with clothing. She has moved past buying things and into choosing them. She is done with pieces she forgets in a season. She wants fewer garments, made with genuine intention, that earn their place in her wardrobe for years. She dresses for herself, not for rooms. URNAM was built for her specifically, and that specificity is something no amount of scale can manufacture.
What we are most proud of, honestly, is that the brand feels true. Not aspirationally true. Actually true. The embroidery is real. The fabrics are what we say they are. The artisans exist, they are skilled, and their work is the design. When a customer receives a piece and writes to tell us it felt personal, that she could feel that it was made by a person, that is the thing we are most proud of. Not the countries we ship to, not the collections, not the press. That moment of recognition between the person who made something and the person who receives it. That is what URNAM is actually for.
We also want readers to know that this brand is entirely founder-run. Every photograph, every campaign, every collection decision, every customer conversation passes through Juhi and Amit. There is no agency, no large team, no outside hand shaping what URNAM looks or sounds like. What you see is what we actually believe. That kind of directness is rare in fashion, and we intend to keep it.
URNAM is clothing made by human hands, for women who dress with intention and have nothing left to prove.
That sentence is not a tagline. It is the truest thing we know how to say about what we build.
What matters most to you? Why?
Integrity of the making. That is the short answer.
The longer one is this. We live in a time when every brand has a story about craft, about sustainability, about the artisan behind the piece. The language has become so common that it has almost stopped meaning anything. You can buy a polyester kurta from a fast-fashion label and find the word “handcrafted” somewhere on the tag. The word has been borrowed so many times it barely holds its original weight anymore.
What matters most to us is that when we say something, it is true. That the hand-embroidery is actually hand-embroidered. That the cotton is actually cotton. That the artisan whose hands made the piece is a real person working in a real atelier, not a photograph in a brand deck. We are not interested in the aesthetic of craft. We are interested in craft itself, the actual hours, the actual skill, the actual human decision behind every stitch.
This matters because clothing is intimate in a way that most products are not. It touches the body. It travels with you. It is present in the moments of your life that you remember. A garment made with dishonesty sits differently on the body than one made with genuine care. We believe that, not poetically but practically. The woman who wears URNAM can feel the difference, and she deserves to know that what she is feeling is real.
The second thing that matters deeply is the woman herself. Not as a customer, as a person. She is at a specific and important moment in her relationship with herself. She has stopped performing. She has stopped buying things because a trend told her to or because a discount made it feel sensible. She is choosing, slowly and deliberately, what represents her. That transition is significant. It is a quiet kind of self-possession, and we take it seriously. URNAM exists to meet her there, not to push her somewhere else.
And the third thing, which perhaps underlies both of these, is the belief that small can be right. That a brand does not need to be large to be meaningful. That a small team doing things honestly and slowly and well is not a limitation, it is a choice. We are not trying to become the biggest Indian womenswear label. We are trying to become the most trusted one, in the specific room where craft, intention, and the Indian artisan tradition all meet.
We started with one machine, one master ji, and one lakh rupees. The scale has grown. The instinct has not changed at all.
Why does all of this matter? Because we think the world has enough clothing. What it does not have enough of is clothing that was worth making. That question, is this worth making, is the one we ask before every collection, every piece, every decision. If we can answer it honestly, everything else follows.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.urnam.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urnam.label
