Khadi India - Concept Store

Commissioned by the Centre of Excellence for Khadi (CoEK), this concept store was designed as a prototype for how future Khadi India outlets could look and feel — reimagining retail as a vehicle for storytelling. Khadi is hand-spun, handwoven cloth that became, under Mahatma Gandhi's vision, a cornerstone of the Swadeshi movement — a symbol of economic self-reliance and quiet defiance against British colonial rule. CoEK's mandate is to bring this material back into the contemporary mainstream, and our brief was to design an experience that carries that legacy forward: not a store that simply sells Khadi, but one that lets visitors understand it, before they ever reach for a product.

At the heart of the concept is a sequence of story areas woven through the store, each one preceding a corresponding product section — home textiles, saris, clothing, and beyond. Rather than arriving directly at the collection, visitors move through a layered narrative that builds context and appreciation before encountering the product itself. The entrance opens with the largest of these areas, dedicated to the broader historical significance of the fabric — situating Khadi within India's freedom struggle before the visitor takes a single step further into the store.

Interspersed through the experience are displays of the traditional tools used to make Khadi, including the charkha — the spinning wheel that Gandhi reintroduced across India's villages and towns as both a practical instrument and a political statement. By placing these tools within the retail journey, the store roots every product in the labour and history behind it, transforming a simple purchase into an informed, intentional one.