Swa-des Indoi
India has woven silk for the world for two thousand years. It has never had a house of its own to show that craft to the world. We are building one.
The craft that has no house
Silk is not a fabric we adopted. It is woven into how we mark every important thing: the wedding, the temple, the first day of a new year, the sari a mother folds away for a daughter she has not yet married.
Our weavers have supplied the world for generations. Their brocades have crossed oceans under other names, cut into other people’s collections, sold under other people’s labels. France has its houses. Italy has its houses. India, which gave silk to so many of them, has none of its own.
That absence is why we exist. Soie Des Indoi was built to bring India’s handwoven silk back as heritage couture, under an Indian name, on its own terms.
Every piece is made in 100% pure silk and cut into the silhouettes a woman reaches for today: lehengas and gowns, power suits and dresses. Nothing is made in advance, and nothing comes in standard sizes. Each piece is constructed to the measurements of the woman who will wear it. The weave stays true to its tradition. The shape is entirely hers.
The name we were given
Swades was my grandmother’s name. My nani.
It is also the word for one’s own land, the country you belong to and carry with you. She lived up to both. Everything I know about loving where I come from, I learned sitting beside her.
When it came time to name this house, there was never really another word. But I wanted a woman in Paris or New York to be able to say it, and to want to. So Swades became Soie Des, which in French reads as the silk of. Soie Des Indoi. Silk of India.
Her name, said in a language the world already listens to.
Why silk
Silk is called the Queen of Fabrics, and not only for its sheen. It keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer, it is strong enough to be handed down, and it is soft enough to wear from the first ritual to the last dance.
Across the subcontinent it has been worn at every scale of life, from the everyday drape to the bridal brocade. We are exploring how far that versatility can go.
Where our silk is woven
Our silk is ethically sourced from weaving communities in four of India’s great silk centres. Because it is woven by hand, no two lengths are exactly alike. A small slub or a shift in sheen is the signature of the loom, not a flaw.
Banaras
Brocades woven with zari on the looms of Varanasi, a craft handed down through generations of weaving families.
Kanchipuram
Dense, lustrous silk from Tamil Nadu’s temple town, prized for its weight, its body and its borders.
Bangalore
Fine mulberry silk from Karnataka, one of the country’s great silk-growing regions.
Gujarat
Silk shaped by Gujarat’s long weaving heritage, with its own language of pattern and colour.
A note from our founder
For ten years I designed what I wore to every wedding and every occasion that mattered, and I kept returning to Indian silk. Not only for its beauty, but for everything it carries: the hands of the weaver, the history of the region, and the women who wore it before us.
My working life has been spent building companies, as an engineer and a founder, and teaching leadership through ancient Indian wisdom. Soie Des Indoi brings those two lives together: the discipline of building something that lasts, in service of a craft that already has.
I want a woman anywhere in the world to reach for Indian silk the way she would reach for any great couture house. Not as something exotic she brought back from a trip, but as the most beautiful thing she owns.
Pooja Monga, Founder
Our current edit, Sona, is a study in gold: pure silk in the shades of melting gold, each piece carrying a Sanskrit name.
View the collection at soiedesindoi.com, or write to us at support@soiedesindoi.com.