Lost City

Lost City Products is a New York based design house that specializes in exquisite hand embroidered fabrics for furnishings, custom embroideries and restoration of embroideries. The company was founded by Afshan Durrani, a Fashion Institute of Technology, N.Y. alumna. The Lost City fabric collection is available to the trade exclusively through showroom representation. We are also commissioned by leading architects like Peter Marino, and fabrics embroidered by us have been used in the most distinguished residences and hotels in the United States and Europe.

Manifesto

Lost City is driven by the desire to create the most beautiful hand embroidered fabrics in the world by employing artisans who would otherwise lose their livelihood. We believe that the extinction of the rare skills possessed by families that still earn their living working with needle and thread would deprive the world of a highly evolved art form that has existed for over five hundred years.

It’s no secret that technological progress often has a human cost. Modernization has pulverized many genteel traditions and sometimes entire civilizations have been sacrificed in the name of advancement. Cities once rich in art and culture have vanished. We are not reformists but we are passionately devoted to preserving some of the craftsmanship that enhances our lives and saving a bit of the magic that illuminates our cities.

The most sophisticated and informed clients in the west have found fabrics created by our artisans to be “breathtaking”, “spectacular”, and “shockingly beautiful”. We are gratified in being able to make this connection between two very disparate worlds. Our mission is to make hand embroidery a flourishing art again.

Renaissance

Like many other cities of old, Lucknow, the capital of the most populous state in India, was once full of mystique and secular traditions. In the 1800s, towards the end of the Mughal Empire, it was India’s center for arts and culture and referred to as the ‘Paris of the East’ due to its traditions of etiquette and opulence, its schools of poetry, music and dance, and its spectacular hand embroidery.

Today, Lucknow is a bustling, chaotic city of deep contradictions. Its world famous architecture has been obliterated by crass commercial structures, its handicrafts industry starved due to neglect, and its elegant traditions have all but vanished into the dusty haze. While we cannot reverse the ravages of time, there is an embroidery renaissance happening in our workshops where artisans celebrate and evolve their ancient craft for a new and highly affluent audience.

Fabrics With Soul

Lost City fabrics are of superlative quality, created using techniques developed under the patronage of the Mughal kings in the 17th century. From the ground fabric and the artwork, to the thread, needlework, finishing and packaging; each process is completed by human hands. The end product is a miracle of eyes and hands, and thread and light. Created by people who have inherited the craft over generations and refined it to the level of poetry.