Her bridal pieces take nine months to make. She has never shortened that time for a client.
The atelier is on the third floor of an old building in Shahpur Jat, and there is no sign on the door. Clients are given the address after their first conversation.
Zoya Kapadia makes fewer than forty bridal pieces a year. Each takes about nine months: three for the design and the dyeing, six for the embroidery, done by a team of eighteen karigars who have worked with her for an average of eleven years.
"If you need it sooner, you need a different designer," she says, without smiling, and then she does smile. "I say it kindly. But I say it."
She trained in textile conservation before she designed a single garment, and it shows. She talks about thread the way other people talk about wine. She keeps a library of old embroidery from across the subcontinent and lends pieces to museums.
Her clients are often the daughters of women she dressed twenty years ago. Several bring their mother's piece to the first meeting. Zoya studies it in silence before she says anything at all.
“If you need it sooner, you need a different designer.”
