About us

THIS IS PEHNAVA

Our Story

Hi, thank you for your interest in our story! My name is Namrata and I am one of the founders of Pehnava.
The story of Pehnava is also a very personal one.

I am an Indian expat living in Dublin since 2018. Every year I was facing the same challenge: finding a beautiful, fitting, and yet affordable Indian dress for the festive season. Each year, as the Diwali festival was approaching, I would be hunting for traditional dresses in Ireland which proved quite difficult. Even though the Indian community is quite big in Ireland, there were just no designers for traditional Indian dresses. I even thought about having a dress shipped over from India, but I dropped that idea very soon. Too time-consuming, too expensive.

I talked to my friends, hoping they would know brands and online shops where I could find something new and as it turned out, we were all facing the same problem. And that was the moment when my sister Bhumi and I started thinking about launching our own fashion label for Indian dresses to be sold in Ireland, the UK, and eventually all over Europe. Because the Indian community is growing …

But where should we start? With a little bit of research, of course – which turned out to be a lot! The industry for Indian dresses is huge and there was so much to learn about fabrics, trending patterns, dress designs, and marketing skills to have people discover our dresses. Luckily, we found a lot of people who believed in our vision and supported us along the way with their skills.

So we decided to took a chance.
And our adventurous journey with Pehnava began.

First, there were the designs. Bhumi and I sat together and started to experiment with different patterns, colors, and fits. And in the end, we came up with multiple design ideas by utilizing some legacy designs and patterns from different parts of India and tried to fused them with the current trending fashion in the Indian market. So we created a somewhat versatile collection of traditional festive clothing with a modern twist.

On to the next step – even though we knew what our fashion should look like, we both didn’t know a thing about tailoring. Luckily my friend and roommate Jyoti’s family was in the clothing business in India and her brother Sumit was a designer for handmade Indian dresses. He took our ideas and made them even better with his inspirational designs and his expertise in tailoring.

What followed was numerous months of further research about markets, business plans, and finances. We kept learning and learning. And we put a 100% in every step along the way.

And today, we are proud that all this hard work paid off and we are able to present you our collections – made with love! We want to provide the best quality clothing for you that is trendy and authentic at the same time. Our fabrics and patterns resemble the culture of many different parts of India. So hopefully our dresses make you feel a little bit closer to Indian traditions even though you are far away.

We want our fashion to show authentic Indian clothing in Europe. India is well known for its rich colorful and beautifully crafted textiles – we want that to show in Europe.

https://vimeo.com/51589652