The Beauty of Handmade
by Aditi Dubey Lee
JoyCorps Fellow // Owner of Ruas
When a woman in a Rabari tribe of Kutch, India gets married, she carries along exquisitely embroidered pillow cases, bed sheets, wall art and more. On the day she reaches her husband’s home, all the village women gather around to welcome her and admire her work. Embroidery is a woman’s identity and capital that honours her inherent creative spirit.
Cultures across the world have a history of women embroidering their clothes and accessories. For the longest time, embroidery has been the voice through which women in far-to-reach locations speak to the world.
Kutch women’s creations are intricate, beautiful and timeless. It was my dream to create an opportunity where the artisans could use their skills and, over a period of time, become accomplished designers. This is why I created Ruas in 2014. I wanted build a business that recognizes the creative spirit in all of us, empowers women artisans, and creates products that artists need.
Our design philosophy is to merge the old with the new to make functional, timeless and beautiful embroidered straps. We sell camera straps to photographers, guitar straps to musicians, and will also be starting to sell bag straps this year.
Ninety percent of rural women artisans in India have no education and depend on crafts for their livelihoods. Ruas can help transform their lives through design knowledge and market access, and as we grow, we will reach out to more communities of women artisans who work with traditional embroidery. Our goal is to help preserve their craft and bring their unrecognized art to the rest of the world.
For the customers, Ruas straps are truly unique, beautiful, great in quality and proud representation of Indian crafts. I believe it is essential to create a culture where we buy things created with imagination, care and love by human hands. I always compare handmade products with machine-made, and guess which is superior? Think of the food our mothers make for us and the food we eat at a restaurant. Mom’s cooking makes us feel loved and nourished, whereas eating out, on most occasions, is mainly about satisfying our hunger or meeting a craving.
It enriches our daily lives to be surrounded by things made with a specific purpose and through the intense effort of another person. Handmade products bring joy to those who create them—and also those who utilize them.
ADITI DUBEY LEE joined the JoyCorps Accelerator in 2019. With the help of her business coaches, she is learning how to develop her strengths to be a better entrepreneur, understanding more about markets and her customers, creating a business plan for the year, learning about the importance of branding, and more. She lives with her husband Bryan (also an entrepreneur!) in Mumbai.