Omar Mansoor Revitalises Craft Culture

The London-based designer focused on heritage while fostering creativity, showed how craft can be applied as modern couture.

Omar Mansoor Revitalises Craft Culture

Omar Mansoor our Goodwill Ambassador is London-based fashion designer who respects culture and heritage. Omar Mansoor fosters, celebrates and rewards skills and craftsmanship.

He recognizes creativity as artisan’s strongest asset. Working with rural artisan-entrepreneurs, we’re transcending craft into cultivating creativity by sharing indigenous gifts & talents with the world.

Craft is intricately woven into the identity and cultural fabric of communities globally; it serves as an expression of both individual ingenuity and collective creativity. Craft embodies multitudes – past heritage, present livelihoods and future hopes and dreams for millions of people around the world. 

Omar eloquently captures the essence of community bonds as intergenerational, cross-disciplinary, collegial, intuitive, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in heritage. He emphasizes the indispensable role of women's skills across the entire production journey, from the foundational acts of warping and stitching to the meticulous details of darning and finishing. 

These honed skills, acquired and perfected through practice, imbue the cloth with an inherent sense of luxury, showcasing the profound value of handmade artistry. Cultivating creativity is the giving and receiving of the gifts and talents. 

In the villages of Pakistan, women are blurring the edges of vocation, of crafts into gifts. They are sharing not only tangible article of clothing but also mobilizing their local community to access their specialized knowledge, to teach, to add, to keep gifts/ talents in motion. Think of gifts as “teachings” or as true mentors, which awakens a part of the soul. 

Such gifts promise transformation as these women strive towards betterment, everything around them, i.e. society, itself becomes better too. 

Come receive the gifts, an expression of authenticity, self-acceptance and belonging. Become interwoven into the social fabric interlocking households.