Young Pakistani-American Woman is Helping to Make Worker-Owned Businesses More Fashionable

Tehmina Brohi on site at the workshop in Pakistan where the fabrics she works with are produced. Photos courtesy of Tehmina Brohi.

By Helen Klein

Tehmina Brohi spent several years working in the nonprofit sector before deciding to try something new, founding a small clothing manufacturing company that would bring the centuries-old traditions of her Pakistani homeland to modern American consumers.

“There are so many different things that inspired me,” Brohi says, “but I think that at the core of it is really my lived experience as a Pakistani-American immigrant woman.”

Admittedly, she knew nothing about the fashion business, but after working for organizations that support worker-owned businesses, Brohi says she felt a calling to celebrate her culture while at the same time building a company that would benefit those who worked for it.

She founded Istani in 2019 — a company focused on making small quantities of high-quality garments that appeal to the modern aesthetic while drawing on the millennia-old manifestations of a culture unknown to many outside Pakistan.

Think of it as being to fashion what slow food is to the culinary arts. Each item Brohi designs is made in small quantities. “I only produce about 50 units per design, and I’m okay with that,” she says.

Brohi, a New Yorker who emigrated to the United States in 1999 at the age of 10, was still new to the country when 9/11 happened. While no Pakistanis were involved in the horrific 9/11 attacks, “I felt I spent so much of my life explaining who Pakistanis are, but also what Pakistanis are not,” Brohi says.

Brohi’s designs use traditional patterns in untraditional ways.

Her fashion business seeks to continue the conversation, illustrating Pakistani culture, “from a different perspective,” says Brohi. “I knew I wanted to work with clothing and culture,” because it was “a way to talk about identity and belonging.”

The core of her business, Brohi says, draws on “a 5,000-year-old method of printing on textiles,” called ajrakh which, she adds, “Is native to the Sindh province in Pakistan and a place in India called Ajrakhpur.”

The process, uses wood blocks, which transfer patterns created with all-natural dyes to 100-percent natural fabrics such as silk and cotton. “These indigenous methods of production are inherently sustainable because they were created with people and the planet in mind,” Brohi says. The entire process, beginning with the growing of the cotton, takes place in Pakistan. It takes 21 days and involves 23 separate steps.

Her goal, Brohi adds, is to create fashion that has staying power, and that its wearers will enjoy for years, in contrast to the disposable fashion that swamps the planet, worn for a season or two, and then discarded.

“I’m on a mission to help people relate more meaningfully to the clothing they buy, own and wear. That’s the reason why I tell the story of how much work goes into making a long-lasting, high-quality garment,” she says. “We’ve lost the actual value of a well-made item to the point that we don’t know how to identify it.”

The clothes can be worn by fashion-forward men and women.

Brohi says she is, “Inspired by some Pakistani design elements,” but modified to appeal to western consumers. And, she has learned by doing. “I have no fashion training — zero. There were definitely some big risks. Most of them have panned out, but there were also some big losses along the way.”

Her first customers were friends and acquaintances, many of whom bought her designs on a regular basis. From that modest start, Brohi began selling her clothes at pop-ups, and began building relationships with other designers and merchants which, she stresses, “I believe is a big part of achieving success for a small business like mine.”

Brohi works with a single workshop in Pakistan that has eight to 10 craftsmen, and pays what she is asked. “Because I speak the language and know the culture,” she says, “it gives me a lot of freedom to pay workers more, what the labor is worth, rather than trying to penny-pinch people. I have the opportunity to pay above market rate. I regularly go to Pakistan to build these relationships and build trust with my suppliers, and that has been crucial for successful production.”

But, Brohi adds, she is hoping to “shift to working with manufacturers in the U.S. I’m particularly interested in exploring partnerships with manufacturers that are worker-owned or have good labor and sustainability practices.

“I’m really interested in creating a healthy workplace and sharing ownership in a fashion business, which is also why I choose to work with small-scale producers.”

Five years in, Brohi is still doing all the work, outside of the actual manufacturing of the garments, as well as holding down a job at a non-profit organization. She hopes to be able to work full-time for Istani within the next three to five years, and more broadly share her passion for traditional production methods and the items that result. And at the same time, remaining mindful about the ethical treatment of those who work on her designs and the impact her products have on the planet we all share.

Brohi admits, “I’ve got my work cut out for me.”