Aira – Samundar Leheriya: When a Saree Moves Like the Sea

There are sarees you remember for the fabric. Some for the colour. And then there are sarees you remember because of a moment.

For me, Leheriya was one of those moments.

I first saw it on Karisma Kapoor in Zubeidaa. There was something almost cinematic about that saree — the movement of colour, the softness of the fabric, the way the waves seemed to move even when she stood still.

Years later, working with Indian crafts and textiles, I realised what had stayed with me wasn't just a beautiful Bollywood costume. It was a craft with centuries of history behind it. And that is the story of Aira – Samundar Leheriya.

 

 

What is Leheriya? From the Deserts of Rajasthan to the Waves of the Sea

The word Leheriya comes from leher, meaning wave. It's one of Rajasthan's most recognisable tie-and-dye traditions, created by rolling fabric diagonally and binding it at intervals before dyeing. When the bindings are removed and the fabric opens, the straight folds reveal flowing diagonal waves of colour.

There's something particularly poetic about this craft coming from Rajasthan — a land of desert, wind and sun, with very little water, and yet one of its most distinctive textile traditions is named after the wave.

Leheriya's movement has traditionally been linked to the monsoon and to the patterns wind carves into desert sand. It became part of Rajasthan's festive and ceremonial textile culture — on turbans, odhanis and sarees, especially around Teej and Gangaur — and was patronised by Rajput courts for royal turban cloths and other garments.

So when we look at a Leheriya saree today, we're looking at something that has travelled a remarkable distance — from royal courts and traditional Rajasthani celebrations to cinema, contemporary wardrobes and modern design.

A Craft That Looks Effortless — But Isn't

The beauty of Leheriya can make it look deceptively simple. Those flowing stripes appear almost effortless. They are anything but.

The fabric has to be rolled diagonally — carefully, consistently — then tied tightly at precise intervals. The fold, the spacing of the bindings, the placement of the dyes, the sequence of dyeing: all of it shapes the final pattern. Add multiple colours, and the process becomes even more demanding. Traditional Leheriya can involve several rounds of tying and dyeing, with the fabric opened, re-rolled or re-tied to build more complex patterns — Mothara, for instance, works across a second diagonal to create intersecting patterns.

This is why handmade Leheriya has something a printed approximation can't reproduce: movement, variation, the human hand, and the beautiful unpredictability of a textile made through process rather than mechanical reproduction.

And Then Came Zubeidaa

For many of us, our first encounter with traditional Indian textiles doesn't happen in a museum or a craft archive. It happens on screen.

For me, it was Zubeidaa. Karisma Kapoor's Leheriya saree in the 2001 film stayed in my visual memory for years. And it's fascinating to see how the same textile keeps travelling through popular culture — in September 2026, Kareena Kapoor Khan appeared in a pastel rainbow Leheriya saree at the music launch of Daayra, a look that immediately recalled Karisma's Zubeidaa moment; Kareena herself shared a comparison of the two.

A beautiful reminder that some crafts never really disappear. They return. They're rediscovered by a new generation, interpreted differently — but the craft remains.

 

The Story Behind Aira – Samundar Leheriya

At Kaisori, our journey with this interpretation of Leheriya began nearly three to four years ago, when we launched our first Leheriya saree as Candy. It wasn't called Samundar then, but the idea was already there — the feeling of colour moving across a landscape, almost like water.

We were drawn to Leheriya not simply as a traditional Rajasthani technique, but for what it could become through a contemporary lens: what happens when the waves soften, the palette turns more nuanced, and the saree starts to feel less like a traditional textile and more like a landscape. That exploration became Aira – Samundar Leheriya.

Why Samundar?

Because when we look at the saree, we don't see just stripes. We see the sea.

The sea is never one colour — pale and translucent at the shore, deep and almost mysterious further out; blue, green, turquoise, grey; reflecting the sky, changing with the light, holding an entire world beneath its surface.

That's the feeling we wanted in Samundar. The different shades become layers of water. The flowing Leheriya lines become currents — some light, some deep, some merging into one another, others staying distinct. The saree is our interpretation of the sea through a Rajasthani craft: a meeting of two landscapes that, at first, seem completely opposite — the desert and the ocean, the dry and the fluid, the stillness of Rajasthan and the movement of waves.

 

Aira – Samundar Leheriya

Aira isn't about making Leheriya look new for the sake of being new. It's about looking at an old craft with fresh eyes.

The traditional technique stays at the heart of it — the rolling, tying, dyeing, opening. But the colour story and visual language let it move into a contemporary wardrobe. That's what we love about Indian craft: it doesn't need to be frozen in time to be preserved. It can evolve — staying rooted in its history while still finding a place in the wardrobe of a woman today.

Why Handmade Matters

There's something important about remembering the hands behind a saree like this.

When we see the finished Leheriya, we see the waves. What we don't see are the hours behind them — the rolling, the tying, the dyeing, the drying, the opening, the repetition, the corrections, the patience. A handmade saree carries all of that. Perhaps that's why handmade textiles feel different when you wear them — they don't just carry colour. They carry process, history, someone's skill.

 

From Rajasthan to Your Wardrobe

Perhaps this is why Leheriya keeps finding its way back into our wardrobes. It has always had movement, colour, a sense of celebration. And now, decades after a young Karisma Kapoor wore it in Zubeidaa, and centuries after Rajasthani artisans developed and refined the craft, Leheriya continues to find new ways of being seen.

At Kaisori, Aira – Samundar Leheriya is our little chapter in that much larger story. A saree inspired by waves. A craft born in Rajasthan. A memory that began with cinema. A sea of colours, brought together by hand.

Aira – Samundar. Because sometimes, the most beautiful way to wear history is to let it move.

Shop the collection here - https://kaisori.com/products/kaisori-aira-leheriya-light-pink-and-white-kota-hanblockprinted-saree-copy?_pos=1&_psq=AIRA+CANDY&_psid=cbebd2c3c&_ss=e