Omar Mansoor’s The Living Loom Brings Kamalia Khaddar to Spring/Summer 2027

For Spring/Summer 2027, Omar Mansoor begins with a material rather than a trend. The Living Loom takes khaddar from Kamalia, Punjab, and places the handwoven fabric at the center of a contemporary collection built around jackets, coat dresses, A-line dresses and long dresses.

The starting point is deliberately simple. Khaddar, made from organic cotton and woven by hand on traditional looms, carries the small irregularities that come with handmade production. The variations in texture and surface are not treated as imperfections to be corrected. They are part of the fabric's character and, in Mansoor's approach, part of the design.

The collection looks at what happens when a textile with a strong connection to Pakistani craft is taken into a modern fashion context without being stripped of the qualities that make it distinctive. Rather than treating khaddar as a reference to the past, The Living Loom uses it as a working material for contemporary silhouettes.

The khaddar comes from artisans in Kamalia, a town in Punjab with a long association with handloom weaving. The fabric's importance to the collection goes beyond its appearance. Its production connects the clothes to the people and processes behind them, bringing the loom itself into the conversation around design.

That relationship between cloth and maker is central to the collection. The unevenness of a handwoven textile means that no two lengths necessarily behave in exactly the same way. The texture changes with the weave, and those changes remain visible once the material becomes clothing. Instead of hiding that character beneath excessive surface treatment, Mansoor allows the fabric to retain its identity.

The result is a collection that works largely through cut and proportion. Jackets and structured pieces establish a more tailored vocabulary, while coat dresses and longer silhouettes give the khaddar room to move. A-line shapes introduce another proportion, keeping the garments close to the body without relying on complicated construction.

Across the collection, ivory and black establish a restrained visual language. The ivory allows the texture of the khaddar to remain visible, while black appears through graphic borders, geometric details and sharply defined sections. The contrast gives the otherwise quiet palette a stronger architectural quality.

The detailing also draws from simple ancient forms. Mansoor has looked towards the shapes and visual language associated with Indus Valley pottery, translating those references into contemporary garment details rather than reproducing historical motifs literally. The connection is subtle, allowing the clothes to remain modern while acknowledging the deeper history of the region from which the textile originates.

This is particularly visible in the use of geometric black detailing across several of the looks. Lines define collars, waist sections and garment edges, creating a visual structure against the lighter ground of the fabric. The effect is graphic without becoming decorative for its own sake.

The choice of khaddar also brings a different pace to the collection. Contemporary fashion often places considerable emphasis on finish, uniformity and industrial consistency. Handwoven cloth works differently. Small changes in the surface remain part of the finished material, making the process visible in a way that machine-made textiles generally do not.

For Mansoor, that visibility is important. The Living Loom is built around the idea that the story of a garment begins before the garment itself, with the people, material and process that make it possible. The collection therefore places the loom at the beginning of the design conversation.

The title itself points towards this relationship. A loom is functional, but it is also where separate threads become cloth. In the context of The Living Loom, the phrase connects the physical act of weaving with the continuation of a textile tradition through contemporary fashion.

There is also a practical dimension to bringing Kamalia khaddar into an international fashion setting. The collection draws attention to the makers behind the material and to the skills required to continue handloom production. Supporting those makers is not presented simply as a decorative addition to the collection's story. It is tied directly to the survival of the techniques that produce the cloth.

That distinction matters. Craft can easily become a visual reference in fashion, detached from the communities and processes that created it. Here, the material remains central. The collection begins with the fabric and its origin, then develops the clothing around it.

Designer Omar Mansoor

The idea also extends the conversation around Pakistani fashion beyond familiar representations of embroidery and formal occasion wear. Khaddar has long existed within everyday and traditional clothing in Pakistan, but Mansoor uses it to explore tailoring, structure and contemporary womenswear. The fabric is not being presented only as heritage. It becomes part of a current design vocabulary.

The silhouettes shown in the collection reinforce that approach. Jackets give the material a structured frame, while coat dresses combine the authority of outerwear with the movement of a dress. The A-line shapes introduce a more straightforward construction, and the long dresses allow the textile's texture and fall to become more prominent.

The restrained color palette keeps attention on these decisions. There is little need for excessive embellishment when the fabric itself provides the surface interest. The ivory-and-black combination also gives the collection a clarity that allows its geometric references to register immediately.

At the same time, the collection does not attempt to make khaddar look like something it is not. The texture remains visible. The handwoven quality remains part of the clothes. The slight variations that occur naturally in the material become part of the finished pieces rather than something to be concealed.

This is where The Living Loom becomes more than a collection built around a textile. It becomes an exercise in translation: how a material rooted in one place can move into another fashion context without losing the information contained within it.

The journey begins in Kamalia, where artisans continue to work with traditional looms and organic cotton, and extends outward through contemporary fashion. Mansoor's stated intention is to support the makers and keep those skills alive while showing what can be created from them for an international audience.

That movement from local textile production to global fashion is central to the collection's proposition. It places Pakistani craft within a wider conversation about design without treating it as a historical artifact. The fabric is alive because it is still being made, still being worked with and still capable of generating new forms.

There is also a cultural dimension to that process. Fashion has long been used as a means of communicating ideas about place, history and identity, but the strongest examples tend to avoid turning culture into costume. The Living Loom works through material and construction instead. The reference to Pakistani history is embedded in the khaddar itself, in the location from which it comes and in the continuation of the craft behind it.

Mansoor's collection ultimately returns to a straightforward proposition: before a garment is designed, there is a material; before the material is cut, there is a process; and before that process becomes part of fashion, there are people who have kept the knowledge alive.

For Spring/Summer 2027, The Living Loom puts that sequence at the centre of the collection. Khaddar comes first, Kamalia comes before the runway, and the loom comes before the cloth. What follows is a contemporary wardrobe built around the texture, irregularity and history of a fabric that has not needed to become something else in order to enter modern fashion.

Photo Credit: Daniel Turbert / @danielturbert