“Slow fashion” gets thrown around a lot. In fact, our last blog was about slow fashion. But have you ever stopped to think about what it actually means to a brand? How do brands really slow things down?
At Kunsquad, it means small-batch production. Limited collections. Just good, honest streetwear made with time, care, and collaboration.
This is what slow fashion means to us and what it looks like behind the scenes.
It Starts With the Feeling
Every piece at Kunsquad begins with a feeling, sometimes inspired from a visual image, a cultural reference, a word that sparks something. We don’t design to match trends. We design when something feels true to us.
Take the Kalicode T-shirt
Minimal on the outside, but we spent weeks testing print, colour fastness, and feel of the print on fabric. The biggest challenge? Painting the graphic without overpowering the fabric's breathability and durability. Slowness made that balance possible.
Prints That Hit Different (Because They’re Ours)
Our graphics aren’t downloaded, copied, or outsourced. They’re created in-house and in close collaboration with artists who actually understand the craft.
Take our Pattachitra-inspired pieces like the Canvas Cord Co-ord Set.
We worked hand-in-hand with trained artisans from Odisha, from sketch to brush. We gave the placement, the story, the moodboard. But they took the lead on the final artwork. Because honouring the art means giving the artists the space to create.
This specific print - a street figure with a radio for a head, surrounded by sun, water, and sky - symbolises the raw energy of nature colliding with urban chaos. It had direction, but it took time (and several design negotiations to meet our budgets) to land on something that met both our visual and ethical standards.
Because here's the truth: Pattachitra isn’t cheap. And Kunsquad will never underpay artisans. So we worked around the art - not around the people or numbers.
We didn’t want it to just look artisanal, we wanted to do it right.
Small Batches. Real People. No Rushing.
All our pieces are made in small batches, in-house and with trusted local artisanal communities in and around Bhubaneswar. Our pieces are built by people who know their craft, tailors with years of experience, trained artisans, and a core in-house team. We don’t just hand over a design and hope it works.
Every garment we make takes 5-6 days to make. The hand painting process by itself takes 2-3 days!
And behind one of our proudest collections is a story of trust:
When we first approached the Pattachitra community at Raghurajpur, we were met with hesitation. Rightfully so. What does streetwear have to do with traditional sacred art? We had to gain their trust, to prove we weren’t diluting the art, we were trying to make it more accessible. It took time. Countless cups of chai. Shoutout to the youth in the village who helped us bridge that gap. Hours of discussion followed, about representation, respect, concepts and even print placements!
The Jajabara Skirt is one of the quiet heroes of that journey — a modern silhouette elevated with minimal Pattachitra accents.
The collection you see now, is the result of a beautiful collaboration between the traditional artisans and the streetwear obsessed Kunsquad team. This is the collection we dreamt of.
Slow Doesn’t Mean Soft
Our pieces still go hard - oversized silhouettes, bold graphics, visual statements. But nothing about them is rushed. We take our time because how something is made matters just as much as what it looks like.
At Kunsquad, the process is the product.
Ready to Wear What Matters?
Explore the drop:
