Designed to be repaired from the first stitch.
Handloom-woven on cotton, naturally dyed, made in small runs. Each piece begins with research with weavers and ends with a garment that no faster process could produce.
Cloth That Holds
Handloom · Denim · Repair
A textile studio making handwoven denim, repair services, and PUBLIC-facing work.
Next
Ruwanthi Gajadeera founded ARALU between Colombo and London, a textile studio making handwoven denim, repair services, and ocean-facing work built to outlast its season.
Material Lab
Loom & Cloth
Scent & Sound Archive
Dye Research
Loom & Cloth
Handwoven denim, jackets, and smaller pieces built on Sri Lankan handloom traditions — most notably Dumbara weaving, one of the island's oldest crafts. Every cloth is made by hand from start to finish.
Scent & Dye
Natural dyes and scent profiles drawn from real places — fermenting indigo, corroded copper, monsoon-wet wood. Each is developed alongside the cloth and released by the warmth of being worn.
Sound
Field recordings from weaving sheds, coastlines, and monsoon rain — captured and woven into the work as evidence of where each cloth was made.
Curation
Workshops, exhibitions, and installations where cloth, scent, and sound work as one. Shown at the UN Ocean Conference, the European Parliament, and the Royal College of Art.
WHAT WE MAKE
Four hours of weaving before the first cut.
S.O.S — SAVE OUR SEAS.
UNOC, 2025.
RECOLLECTION.
COLOMBO, 2022.
"Take Me Home" YAKADA.
Redress design awards, 2022
HOW WE WORK
How a garment is made
is part of what it is.
Record before the pattern
Every collection begins with research with weavers in Sri Lanka, with field recordings from coastlines and looms. None of it disappears at the cutting table. It stays in the cloth.
If it is there, it belongs there.
The indigo in our current collection is fermented in Sri Lanka using a centuries-old method. The copper dye in the S.O.S series mirrors the chemistry of corroding seawater. Every scent is drawn from a real place. If something is in the work, there is a reason.
