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A new exhibition held in Istanbul brings renewed attention to India’s textile heritage, featuring Turkish-born Princess Esra Birgen’s historic collection and presenting Kashmiri masterpieces and modern Indian labels, along with a mix of archival garments from Hyderabad and contemporary works by Indian designers.
The exhibition renewed attention to India’s textile heritage, with the Turkish-born Princess Esra Birgen’s collection featured as a central element.
Titled “Woven Legacies: Celebrating India’s Textile Heritage,” the three-day event showcases historic garments and fabrics from Hyderabad, presented alongside contemporary work by Indian designers.
The exhibition ran from Nov. 27 to 29 in a three-day show in Istanbul that reframes craft as a living, evolving culture.
Seventeen items from Birgen’s Chowmahalla Palace archive anchor the display. The former wife of the last Nizam of Hyderabad, Birgen is widely known for her role in restoring the Chowmahalla and Falaknuma Palaces, a conservation effort that earned her the UNESCO Asia Pacific Award in 2010.
Her contributions to the exhibition include an 18th-century printed textile, a zari-embroidered jacket, a child’s ceremonial ensemble, and a pair of embroidered juttis.
Through Princess Esra’s archive and the broader selection of works, the exhibition documents the movement of techniques, motifs, and materials across geographies.
These items are exhibited alongside more than 50 textiles sourced from antique collectors and craft specialists in Türkiye and India.
The 50 textiles were borrowed from antique collector Seref Ozen and craft specialists across Türkiye and India, along with pieces by contemporary Indian designers.
Together, they offer a focused look at hand-driven Indian weaving techniques and their influence on cross-cultural design.
The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Consulate General of India, examines the continuity of hand-driven textile practices and their adaptation across time.
By presenting historical items next to modern interpretations, the event highlights the technical foundations of Indian weaving traditions and their influence on contemporary design.
The initiative also underscores the longstanding exchange between textile cultures of South Asia and regions such as Türkiye, where similar craftsmanship traditions have evolved along parallel lines.
Rather than positioning the textiles as static artifacts, the event presents them as part of an ongoing craft ecosystem shaped by collaboration between artisans, collectors, and designers.
In doing so, it outlines the historical and contemporary relevance of Hyderabad’s textile heritage within a wider international context.
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