KUR Collection: Craft That Has Come Full Circle

In this episode, part of our monthly brand feature series, we learn about KUR Collection, a New York City based company created and led by Sri Lankan designer Kasuni Rathnasuriya.

Joshua Williams: Each month on News Bytes, we feature a fashion brand that approaches business differently and innovatively or operates outside of the main fashion systems and capitals. I'm with Sass Brown, an expert in ethical fashion, sustainability and craftsmanship. She is the former Dean of Art and Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the founding Dean at Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation.

Joshua Williams: Hello, Sass! And welcome back. Who are we featuring this month? 

Sass Brown: We're talking about Kur Collection.

Joshua Williams: Based in New York city. Can you tell us a little bit about them? 

Sass Brown: Sure. The founder is based in New York, but the production is done out of Sri Lanka. And they're a young contemporary women's wear, mostly dress collection, dresses and separates. Really pretty. That incorporates handmade Portuguese lace or Dutch handmade lace, but from Sri Lanka. It's called Biralu lace there. And it's really beautiful. 

Joshua Williams: It's very interesting because as you said, they're producing out of Sri Lanka, but they're also using Portuguese techniques.  How did this sort of interesting combination come about?

Sass Brown: Well, traditional material culture is often just like culture itself, a response to immigration, to colonialism, all of those things. So Portuguese handmade lace was adopted in Sri Lanka through Portuguese colonialism and then Dutch colonialism, both of which countries ladies of leisure, used to do handmade lace in their own time. And so that was transmitted to the local population and taken up by them. And now it's part of their culture and part of their history.

Joshua Williams: So, what was it about this particular craft that made the founders and designers at Kur collection to incorporate it in their collection? 

Sass Brown:  It's their USP effectively, it's their unique selling factor, right? It's what differentiates their collection. They include Biralu lace in almost every piece of their collection in some way, shape or form. Some it's very minimal. Some they don't include at all, but very few. And some are almost completely and totally made out of handmade lace. So, it's a tradition, like many slow fashion traditions that's being lost and is not being continued. And Kasuni sees part of her role as sustaining that tradition as something that's unique from the heritage that she has a product from. She is Sri Lankan and she comes from this region. It's in the Southern coast of Sri Lanka.  And in fact, the center that she works with, which is called the Dickwella Lace Center was a response to the tsunami that deeply impacted that community in 2004, because it's a coastal region. And that's the same region that practices this handmade lace tradition.

And it's the region that does that for the same reasons; that's where the invading forces came from Portugal and from the Netherlands, right? So, it is all in that Southern region of the coast, where the lace is practiced and where I think they lost somewhere in the region of 4,000 people were lost from a very small community.

Joshua Williams: So, you've mentioned that this is a collection that is produced in terms of getting it out to market but has these hand details. Can you talk a little bit about how other businesses can learn from adopting sort of a hand plus scalable production model? 

Sass Brown: Well, I think what's really interesting about Kasuni's line, Kur Collection, is that the material that she uses, this Biralu lace is absolutely traditional, completely, in terms of pattern, in terms of color, in terms of materials. But she then utilizes that tradition 'as is," but in a contemporary women's collection.  So, the end product is contemporary, but the materials that she utilizes are not. So, she isn't intervening and interfering in that tradition and the codes and the symbols and the values, et cetera, that are embedded in it. She's merely utilizing it in a different product.  And she does it on very small scale. We're effectively talking about a sole trader here. She's a perfect example, in many ways, of a small emerging designer who chooses to work with artisanship to differentiate her product, also impacting the tradition of a craft but appealing to a new young hip generation.

Joshua Williams: So important. Can you tell our listeners how they can learn more about the Kur Collection and the work that is being done? 

Sass Brown: Sure. Well, the best way is their own website. so KurCollection.com, it's pretty straightforward.  You can purchase the collection directly from the e-commerce site. But she also has the usual social media feeds, Facebook and Instagram, where you can actually get more of the greater story of the traditions and the women lace makers behind it. But you can shop directly on the Kur Collection website. 

Joshua Williams: Great. Thank you so much Sass. And we look forward to having you back next month.

Sass Brown: You're welcome. Take care.