Reviving Heirloom Textiles for a New Age: In Conversation with Sanjay Garg

Raw Mango, founded by Sanjay Garg in 2008, is a design house with a practice grounded in textile research, historical inquiry and living craft traditions. Working collaboratively with karigar (master craftspeople) across India to research and revitalise regional weaving and dyeing techniques, the studio also interrogates heirloom pieces and museum collections to create contemporary textiles that innovate upon skills refined over centuries.

Approaching textiles as archives within a continuously evolving cultural ecology, this talk situates Raw Mango’s work within broader questions of material culture: how old technologies endure, adapt, and generate new aesthetic vocabularies

Recorded live at the Australian Museum on Monday 23 March 2026, Sanjay Garg was in conversation with Megha Kapoor (INPRINT Magazine, Vogue India), followed by an audience Q&A moderated by the AM’s World Cultures Collection Manager, Max Moon. The Australian Museum was proud to host Sanjay Garg’s first public peaking event in Australia.

Spanning over four millennia and every continent on earth, the World Cultures Collections holds 14,000 objects from over one hundred countries and innumerable cultural groups from around the world outside of the Pacific.

Reflecting Australia’s place in the world, Asian nations make up nearly half of the World Cultures collection, with South Asia one of the early collection foci represented by over 1000 objects today. Much like the region’s geography, India contributes the lion’s share with almost 800 items.

Sanjay Garg emerged from an upbringing in the village of Mubarikpur, Rajasthan. As a student of textile design, he developed his unique language in 2008, working in Chanderi, Madhya Pradesh. Garg undertook innovations within the yarn and weaving process to create a new visual vocabulary and weaving interventions which, over a decade later, visually define Chanderi today.

A commitment to experimentation underpins his process, with further explorations in Mashru, Benarasi and Ikat. Always informed by India, Garg constantly engages with the established rubric to imagine new possibilities.

Megha Kapoor is a renowned editor, creative director and writer known for her timeless aesthetic and commitment to diverse storytelling. As the former editor of Vogue India, she dramatically expanded its global influence, championing cultural stroytelling and redefining its visual language. Born in India and raised in New Zealand, she founded INPRINT, a multidisciplinary publishing platform, and previously worked at Vogue Australia. With a global perspective, Kapoor continues to amplify meaningful narratives that reflect the world’s evolving cultural landscape.