Men Shawls

A man’s shawl, in Kashmir, has always been a quiet inheritance. It is the piece a father folds away in winter and a son unfolds a decade later, still warm, still soft, still carrying the scent of cedarwood. The merino shawls gathered here are worked in sozni, the slow needlework that asks a single artisan to sit with a length of cloth for months at a time. The motifs draw from the older grammar of the valley — paisley, chinar leaf, the trellis of a Mughal garden — restrained in palette, generous in detail. For those new to the craft, our notes on Sozni needlework and a closer look at handwoven versus machine-made cloth explain why a shawl this considered tends to outlast the wardrobe around it.