Meet Kirti

I grew up in the Kumaon Himalayas, in Nainital, always outdoors — drawn to flowers and leaves, the small asymmetries of the natural world. That early love for organic form finds its way into my design style. Frequent trips to Jaipur growing up became a lasting love affair with the city's colors and craft.

Learning the craft

I trained at the Pearl Institute of Fashion in Delhi, then at ARS Arpel in Milan, where I refined my design sensibility against an International standard of precision and form. This gave me fluency in both traditional and contemporary design languages.

Designing at the UN and a return to artisans

It was my time designing shoes and accessories for the United Nations that changed everything. Working across international markets meant working directly with artisans — sitting in their workshops, watching hands that had spent decades mastering a single technique. I was drawn back to what I loved- the traditional, unhurried ways of making things by hand. That's where my belief in slow design was born — not as a trend, but as a way of respecting the people and process behind every object.

That philosophy is what I carried home to Jaipur, and it's the foundation of everything barefoot.athome makes today.