Colombo is rewriting South Asia’s fashion playbook
The article explores how Colombo Fashion Week is attempting to transition Sri Lanka from a garment manufacturing hub into a center for independent, sustainable fashion design. It highlights the challenges local designers face in scaling their production and gaining international recognition.
Why it matters
It reflects the broader economic shift in developing nations trying to move up the value chain from low-cost manufacturing to high-value creative industries.
Before Colombo had a fashion week, and much before sustainable fashion became a buzzword-riddled marketing category anyone could buy into, Ajai Vir Singh often argued that a country famous for making other people’s clothes could also be trusted with its own name on the label.
Through the years, Singh, who went to Sri Lanka as an expatriate in the 90s, eyed a nascent market with a relatively modest pool of contemporary designers and built a fashion week. Everything Colombo Fashion Week (CFW) has tried to become since — a South Asian design hub, a sustainability showcase, and now a BRICS-adjacent cultural platform — is built on the belief that a manufacturing economy can also be a moral axis of mindful style.
Ajai Vir Singh argued that a country famous for making other people’s clothes could also be trusted with its own name on the label. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
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