The Founder’s Touch: Three Years of Waiting for the Right Fabric in the AfterWait Collection

The AfterWait collection is not just built on a revived bamboo weave—it is built on patience. Once the mats were ready, they could have gone into products immediately. Instead, the founders, Ms. Akshya Shree and Ms. Dhwani Shree, chose to wait almost three years until they found fabrics that truly honoured the weave and the story they wanted to tell. That decision—to delay a launch until every layer felt right—is what gives AfterWait its depth.
After the bamboo mats were perfected, the AfterWait collection didn’t appear overnight. For nearly three years, founders Akshya Shree and Dhwani Shree searched for fabrics that would not only match the rare weave but also add character, authenticity and a contemporary voice. Every textile, colour and motif in the collection has literally passed through their hands.

1. Mats Were Ready. The Collection Was Not.

The revived bamboo mat weave sat rolled up in the studio, structurally perfect and technically resolved. Yet something felt unfinished. The base was strong, but the skin and story—the fabrics that would sit alongside the bamboo—were still missing. Rather than rushing to market, the founders made an unusual decision in a fast‑paced industry: they would not launch until they found textiles that felt as considered as the weave itself.

2. Three Years of Looking, Touching, Saying “No”

For almost three years, Akshya and Dhwani looked at fabrics the way curators look at art:

• They rejected materials that felt trendy but shallow.

• They walked away from prints that were pretty but said nothing about the collection’s spirit.

• They tested countless swatches against the bamboo mats, checking how colour, weight and drape interacted with the weave.

Many of these sessions ended with the same conclusion: “Not yet. This still doesn’t feel like AfterWait.” Those “no”s are the invisible labour behind every eventual “yes.”

3. Choosing Fabrics that Add Story, Not Just Surface

The brief was clear but demanding: each fabric had to:

• Justify the weave – not overshadow it, not disappear against it, but sit in conversation with it.

• Add character – through florals, monochrome patterns or subtle textures that expanded the narrative.

• Stay authentic and contemporary – rooted in craft yet at ease in modern homes.

This led to floral canvases that hinted at landscapes and folklore, monochrome jacquards that brought a graphic edge, and solid bases that allowed the bamboo to stay centre‑stage. None of these were accidental; each was picked by the founders themselves.

4. The Founder’s Touch: Hands on Every Fabric

What makes this process special is how personal it was. Instead of delegating sourcing entirely to a buying team, Akshya and Dhwani:

• Visited markets and mills, handling fabrics in person.

• Debated over tiny shifts in colour—“this shade is one step too loud; this one feels just right.”

• Checked that every textile choice worked across cushions, runners, placemats and bed mats without losing integrity.

They didn’t simply sign off on moodboards; they touched and chose the actual cloth that now lives in each AfterWait product. This is what the team lovingly calls the founder’s touch.

5. Why Waiting Changed the Collection

If the mats had been paired with the first acceptable fabric, AfterWait would still have been beautiful—but it might not have felt inevitable. The three‑year wait allowed:

• A stronger, more coherent design language to emerge.

• Space for the founders’ personal aesthetics—quiet luxury, story‑rich patterning, respect for craft—to fully infuse the collection.

• A launch that felt aligned, not forced; when the pieces finally came together, there was a shared sense of, “Now it’s ready. This is what it was always meant to be.”

Customers may never know the full timeline, but they can sense the difference between something assembled quickly and something that has been lived with, argued over and refined before it meets them.