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Jaipur Rugs’ new flagship store at Empire Mills, Lower Parel, transforms a former warehouse into a dialogue between Mumbai’s industrial textile past and India’s artisanal weaving traditions. Designed by Roar, the space blends exposed industrial architecture with fractal-inspired interiors, museum-like rug displays, and live weaving demonstrations that foreground process, material culture, and living craft heritage.
Jaipur Rugs’ new flagship store in Mumbai, located at Empire Mills, Lower Parel, occupies a former warehouse in Girangaon — the historic mill district once formed the industrial heart of Mumbai’s textile economy. Jaipur Rugs positions the warehouse and its history as part of the experience. The new space brings together two strands of India’s textile history: Mumbai’s industrial legacy and the country’s enduring traditions of artisanal weaving.
“Empire Mills carries the memory of Mumbai’s textile heritage, while Jaipur Rugs carries the living tradition of the Indian loom. Bringing the two together felt incredibly meaningful. We want people to walk into this space and leave with a deeper appreciation for the human skill, time and emotion behind every handmade rug. This is how we believe Indian craft can find its place in the global luxury conversation,” N.K.Chaudhary, founder of Jaipur Rugs, says.
Designed by Roar — the Dubai-based multidisciplinary design studio led by Pallavi Dean — the space retains the industrial character of the original structure while introducing a contemporary vocabulary drawn from fractal geometry and the repetitive process of weaving. The entrance foyer opens to the original ceilings, with rugs displayed like artefacts at a museum. The result is a space that asks visitors to spend time looking and engaging with the objects beyond their utility.
“We didn’t want to design another showroom; we wanted to create a journey,” Dean says. “The building already had a powerful identity — the steel structure, the pitched roof, the clerestory light and the memory of its textile past. Our role was to work with that character rather than compete with it. We looked at weaving as a system of repetition, rhythm and connection, and translated those ideas into the architecture through fractal geometry and a series of sculptural volumes. The result is intended to feel less like a retail space and more like a textile unfolding — layer by layer, revealing something new as you move through it.”
This emphasis on material culture extends to the store’s programming. Weaving demonstrations and material exploration bring the rug-making process into view. At the same time, an extensive archive of rugs gives visitors a chance to learn about the materials and techniques behind the finished pieces.
The approach reflects Jaipur Rugs’ broader attempt to place craft within contemporary design and luxury without stripping it of its traditional context. Here, heritage is presented as a living practice that can move into new spaces and conversations.
Lower Parel’s textile history grew around an industrial ecosystem that transformed the city's production scale. The Jaipur Rugs experience centre adds another dimension to that historical connection to textiles by focusing on individual makers, material culture, process, and the knowledge of handcraft accumulated over generations.
The new outlet consequently functions as more than a retail destination. It serves as a point of encounter between Mumbai’s textile history and India’s continuing weaving traditions — between the language of contemporary design and the much older human processes that sustain it.
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