From Darning to Designing: Cultural Knowledge, Innovation, and Sustainability in Raffughar’s Journey

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-620-3_10How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Cultural Sustainability; Craft Innovation; Kashmiri Textiles; Raffu; Creative Economy; Ethical Design

Abstract

Raffughar, a design initiative by NID graduate Wajahat Rather, takes insights from the nature, culture, and heritage of Kashmir to inform contemporary textile design. Known for reinventing traditional Kashmiri silhouettes and motifs, Rather views design as a context-based and teamwork-oriented endeavour based on cultural continuity. The research places Raffughar within the larger narrative of the Creative and Cultural Sectors, analyzing how culturally rooted business ventures manage the plight of maintaining heritage crafts while serving contemporary markets. Based on interviews with the founder and artisans, visual and material analysis, and secondary data from publications and online platforms, the study uses a qualitative case study approach. Backed by innovation diffusion and cultural sustainability theories, the paper examines how Raffughar innovatively turns the historic Kashmiri craft of raffu (darning) into high-value, design-led products that are meaningful both locally and internationally. There are findings that startups such as Raffughar thrive using a hybrid model combining in-depth cultural understanding with modern design education, ethical production values, and inclusive artisan involvement. Not only do these models solidify rural craft economies but also disrupt prevailing discourses of design innovation by placing indigenous knowledge systems in the foreground. The paper concludes that culturally embedded design businesses have considerable potential as scalable and sustainable models for entrepreneurship. It demands more institutional backing and scholarly attention towards vernacular design practices, situating them at the forefront of the future of responsible innovation in the global creative economy.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Rikimi Madhukaillya
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/03/31
TI  - From Darning to Designing: Cultural Knowledge, Innovation, and Sustainability in Raffughar’s Journey
BT  - Proceedings of the ATLAS International Design Conference 2025 (AIDC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 146
EP  - 159
SN  - 2667-128X
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-620-3_10
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-620-3_10
ID  - Madhukaillya2026
ER  -