It is hard to miss a Pabi Bag.
Bright ribbons run across its cotton surface, forming colourful patterns that immediately catch the eye. Look a little closer, though, and the bag reveals something more: a contemporary product carrying the visual language of Kutch’s Rabari embroidery — and the story of a craft that found a second life.
Today, Pabiben Rabari’s enterprise supports more than 300 women artisans, helping turn their traditional skills into an income-generating craft business. Her signature Hari Jari technique has travelled from the villages of Kutch to international markets, with her bags even making appearances in Bollywood and Hollywood films.
But Pabiben’s journey did not begin with a business plan. It began with a craft that was slowly disappearing.
When embroidery was banned
Pabiben grew up in Kukadsar, a village in Kutch, surrounded by the intricate embroidery traditions of the Rabari community. She left school at a young age to help her widowed mother and began working with her hands. In 1998, she joined a women’s group where she trained as an artisan.
At the time, however, traditional Rabari embroidery was facing a major setback.
She transformed the traditional visual language of Rabari embroidery into contemporary products, giving an age-old craft a new place in the modern marketplace.
Photograph: (Travel & Leisure Asia)
The Dhebaria Rabari community had banned women from doing traditional wedding embroidery in the 1990s. The elaborate handwork could take months, and community leaders believed that the time spent on it was contributing to delays in marriage.
For a craft so deeply connected to the community’s identity, the restriction could have meant its gradual disappearance.
Instead, the women began finding another way.
They experimented with machine appliqué, ribbons and decorative trims, retaining the distinctive colours and patterns of Rabari embroidery while creating something faster and more contemporary.
The technique came to be known as Hari Jari.
The making of the Pabi Bag
Pabiben eventually began exploring how Hari Jari could be adapted into products that people outside the community could use.
At a design programme at Kala Raksha Vidyalaya, she created a colourful bag using the technique. It combined ribbons and trims with cotton, creating a product that looked distinctly Kutch yet belonged comfortably in a modern marketplace.
That bag became known as the Pabi Bag.
Its appeal lay in the meeting of two worlds. The design retained the bold, colourful aesthetic of Rabari craft, while the format transformed it into something practical and contemporary. The products also incorporated cotton and locally block-printed, naturally dyed fabrics.
Soon, the bag began travelling far beyond Kutch.
What began as an adaptation to keep Rabari craft alive has grown into an enterprise supporting more than 300 women artisans across Kutch. Photograph: (Travel & Leisure Asia)
It appeared in films, including Bollywood’s Luck by Chance and Hollywood’s The Other End of the Line, giving an unexpected global platform to a craft that had begun in the homes of Rabari women.
But Pabiben was not content with simply making a product people admired.
She wanted to create a market for it.
From making bags to building a brand
That meant making the transition from artisan to entrepreneur.
Pabiben began developing products independently and eventually launched Pabiben.com in 2015, an artisan-led enterprise that connects handmade products from Kutch with wider markets. What started with the Pabi Bag grew into a larger range of bags, purses, toiletry kits, files, quilts, cushion covers and other lifestyle products.
Through her signature Hari Jari technique, Pabiben Rabari has helped take the vibrant craft traditions of Kutch from village homes to markets around the world. Photograph: (DNA India)
The important change was not simply that the products were being sold online.
It was that the women making them could participate in a value chain built around their own skills.
Instead of treating traditional craft as something to be preserved only for museums or festivals, Pabiben turned it into something people could use – and therefore something people could pay for.
When tradition became a livelihood
Today, the enterprise supports more than 300 women artisans.
For them, Hari Jari is not merely an old technique being kept alive. It is work that can be done using skills they already possess, while allowing the craft to reach customers far beyond their villages.
And that is what makes Pabiben’s story bigger than one successful bag.
She did not recreate traditional Rabari embroidery exactly as it was. She understood that for a craft to survive, it sometimes has to change.
Today, every Pabi Bag carries the story of a tradition transformed into opportunity for hundreds of women Photograph: (Divya Bhaskar)
A technique born out of a community’s restrictions became a new form of expression. That expression became a product. The product became a brand. And the brand created livelihoods for hundreds of women.
Today, every colourful Pabi Bag carries that journey — from the embroidery traditions of Kutch to a new generation of artisans building a future from them.
For Pabiben, keeping a craft alive did not mean looking backwards,it meant giving it somewhere new to go.
