Stanzin Palmo, a 26-year-old fashion designer from Leh, is representing the region to the world with her unique label, ‘Zilzom.’
She presented her latest collection ‘Between the Earth and Sky’ at the Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai earlier this year.
She has also garnered accolades from Jamyang Tsering Namgyal, Member of Parliament, Ladakh. He said that Ms Stanzin Palmo takes inspiration from Ladakh’s culture, tradition and beauty and gives it a contemporary twist through digital art and embroidery. He appreciated her innovative skills and dedicated efforts to promote the cultural identity of Ladakh in the fashion world on a global stage.
Stanzin has graduated from NIFT-Delhi. She has worked with many designers and brands including Sonal Verma of Rara Avis and Supreme Overseas.
However, Stanzin’s stint with Looms of Ladakh in 2017, where she was a design mentor, inspired her to start her own venture.
Stanzin says that she began with an orientation programme where she taught workers the value of the raw material (Pashmina), and their skill, which they initially would use just to develop products for personal consumption, and sell the extra pure wool products in the market at a very cheap rate. Later, she made them understand the importance of design, finishing and size standardisation.
Before this stint, she believes that she did not understand the real value of Pashmina for the local economy.
She said that working at Looms of Ladakh for her was like looking through a window. Now, when she does embroidery work on Pashmina, she has the option of doing it on the finer fabric and then, get it made in Kashmir. But she decided against it as the idea is to give Ladakhi pashmina its own identity. It is affordable as everything is handmade.
She manages 40-50 women artisans who are older than her too without any prior experience.
Stanzin believes that fashion isn’t just about creating clothes, but also about weaving a story.
She tells that for her summer collection, she drove her inspiration from a beautiful set of clouds which she saw and the sight of apple and apricot. These visuals stay in her mind, and she starts sketching these on her diaries. But she avoids making an exact copy. She prefers incorporation of traditional designs and innovation.
