Ritu Kumar rarely finds herself at the centre of a controversy. For decades, she’s been one of the biggest names in Indian fashion, credited with bringing traditional textiles, hand embroidery and forgotten crafts back into the spotlight. Which is exactly why a comment she made during a recent podcast has left so many people stunned.The designer appeared on The Masoom Minawala Show, where she was talking about one of her exhibitions from the 1980s. In the middle of the conversation, she recalled trying to find a name for the collection.“The word zardozi was not there. I did an exhibition, didn’t know what to call it. Zar is the name from Iran and dozi, I stuck with it, and we put zardozi. Now today it’s become a generic term,” she said.For a second, the moment almost passed unnoticed. The host responded with a surprised, “Oh, really?” before adding, “And then it just took off.” But once that clip reached Instagram, people had questions. Lots of them.The comments section filled up almost immediately. And this wasn’t the usual internet outrage. Textile researchers, fashion students, historians and people who’ve grown up around Indian crafts all began pointing out the same thing: zardozi wasn’t coined in the 1980s.One user summed up the mood with a comment that quickly caught attention: “Nani’s, Dadi’s and generations before them are all collectively confused right now.”Another didn’t mince words either.“Zardozi is one of the oldest embroidery traditions in the world,” they wrote, before explaining that the word comes from the Persian words zar (gold) and dozi (embroidery or stitching), literally meaning “gold embroidery.”That explanation has long been accepted by textile historians. The craft itself travelled across regions over centuries before flourishing in the Indian subcontinent, particularly under royal patronage.Which is why many people found the podcast clip difficult to believe.Some comments went a step further, accusing the designer of rewriting history.“Big designers like herself shouldn’t bend textile history,” one person wrote. “People listen to them, and that’s exactly why facts matter.”Others pointed towards historical references dating back several hundred years, saying the word appears in Persian texts and has been associated with gold-thread embroidery long before modern Indian fashion existed.One particularly sharp comment read, “Is she 500 years old?”Then the conversation took another turn.The criticism wasn’t just directed at Ritu Kumar anymore. Some viewers questioned why the claim had gone unchallenged during the interview.One follower of the podcast wrote that they loved the show but were surprised such a significant historical statement hadn’t been fact-checked before being shared online. Among those who responded was handloom and handicraft researcher Diya Roychowdhury, who runs the Instagram page vastrakathaxdiya. She shared a detailed post explaining that the word dozi has been used in Persian for embroidery for centuries, appearing in terms such as chikandozi and zardozi.She also pointed followers to her own research, where she traces the history of gold-wire embroidery across different civilisations. According to Roychowdhury, the craft has existed in various forms for thousands of years and later evolved under different rulers, including the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals.Her post was widely shared among textile enthusiasts, many of whom said the controversy highlighted a larger problem.Fashion often celebrates craftsmanship.But the stories behind that craftsmanship can sometimes get simplified, blurred or, in some cases, completely rewritten.That’s why this debate struck such a nerve.Zardozi isn’t just another embroidery technique. It’s part of a much larger textile history that stretches across cultures, kingdoms and generations of artisans whose names most people will never know.Many of the craftsmen practising it today belong to families that have passed the skill down over generations. For them, the word carries history as much as it does technique.Perhaps that’s why so many people reacted so strongly.It wasn’t simply about whether Ritu Kumar misspoke during an interview.It was about protecting the history of a craft that existed long before any modern fashion label – and making sure the people who preserved it over centuries aren’t written out of its story.At the time of writing, neither Ritu Kumar nor the podcast has publicly responded to the criticism. But one thing is clear: a single sentence in a fashion interview has opened up a much bigger conversation about heritage, authorship and why accuracy matters when you’re talking about India’s textile legacy.
