Why the Neighbourhood Tailor Matters More Than Ever

Last week, a friend forwarded me a fascinating piece from Data for India about the rise of custom tailoring in India. At first, it felt like an interesting industry datapoint. But as I read deeper, it felt personal...like someone had finally put numbers to a story I’ve been witnessing every single day at Swara.

According to the research, India now has nearly 12 million custom tailors.

That means 1 in every 6 manufacturing workers in India is a tailor.

And here’s the part that made me pause:

Between 2018 and 2024, India added 14 million new manufacturing jobs but 5 million of those were in custom tailoring alone.

As someone who works closely with women tailors, craftswomen, and micro-entrepreneurs across Kerala, I wasn’t surprised. This is exactly the India I know.

The Tailor is the Real Backbone of Indian Fashion

In the fashion world, we speak a lot about designers, brands, influencers, and textile traditions. But the quiet force holding up the entire system, especially in women-led, grassroots enterprises like Swara—is the tailor.

In Ettumanoor alone, I can point you to dozens of small tailoring units tucked between houses, above provision stores, inside courtyards.

These are rooms filled with:

• old pedal machines and bright scraps of cloth

• women who learned cutting from their mothers

• men who stitched their first blouse at 14

• young people who enter tailoring because it is one of the only dignified livelihoods available locally

And yet, this massive workforce—12 million strong—rarely appears in India’s conversations about “manufacturing growth”.

But Tailoring Is Counted as a Service, Not Manufacturing

This was the twist in the Data for India article that hit home.

In national accounts, tailoring is considered a service, not manufacturing, even though tailors are literally transforming raw material (cloth) into a finished product (garment).

This means India’s manufacturing story is about its growth, its decline, its projections—may be incomplete without acknowledging the millions of people quietly powering it.

At Swara, we often find ourselves straddling this category confusion too.

Our work with artisans, tailors, natural dyers, handloom clusters, block printers—none of it fits neatly into India’s understanding of “manufacturing”, even though these are precisely the hands that make India’s fashion industry possible.

Women Are Driving This Shift

One thing the data didn’t explicitly say—but the ground reality tells us—is that a huge share of tailors in India are women.

For many women we work with, tailoring is the first job they have ever held.

It means:

• income they can earn without leaving their village

• work that fits around childcare

• a skill they can build without formal education

• the ability to start a micro-business from home

• dignity

At Swara, I’ve watched women go from hemming blouses for neighbours to handling full-fledged production for global orders. I’ve seen confidence bloom where there was earlier only hesitation:

“Chechi, do you think I can really earn through this?”

When we talk about women's economic empowerment, this is what it looks like: millions of women sitting at their machines, stitching.

What This Means for the Future of Indian Fashion

The data points to a story that is still unfolding:

• The future of fashion is hyper-local, customized, and people-powered—not factory-driven alone.

• Women sitting in tailoring rooms across India are playing a pivotal role in shaping the country’s economic landscape.

And to me, the question isn’t whether custom tailoring is manufacturing or service.
The real question is:

How do we ensure that this enormous, invisible workforce gets the recognition, training, income, stability, and dignity it deserves?

At Swara, This Is the Work We Wake Up To Every Day

Our entire model exists because we believe in the potential of the neighbourhood tailor.

We believe:

• A tailoring unit in Ettumanoor can produce world-class garments.

• A woman who learned stitching informally can earn as much as a formal factory worker.

• The "unorganised sector" is actually the heart of Indian fashion.

• Skill, dignity, and economic opportunity should not belong only to urban factories or large brands.

When I read the Data for India piece, it reminded me that Swara is part of a much larger movement.

- Written by Asha Scaria Vettoor, Founder of Swara.