Shop from FabIndia & Ship Worldwide

What FabIndia is worth ordering for

FabIndia built its name on handwoven and hand-printed cotton — kurtas and kurtis, khadi, block prints, dupattas and everyday Indian clothing that is meant to be worn rather than kept for a wedding. It also carries home linen, personal care and packaged foods. For most people abroad the draw is the clothing: plain, well-cut cotton in Indian sizing, of a kind that is awkward to find outside India and expensive when you do.

If you are shopping the wider kurta market rather than one label, the kurta buying guide covers what to look for across sellers, and Kerala handloom covers the weaves nearer to us.

Will they deliver to your country?

Check at your own checkout. Whether an Indian retailer will post to your address depends on the item, the seller and where you are, and those policies change without notice. What we can offer is the fallback: if FabIndia cannot ship to you, or the international option is priced past what the clothes cost, order to a free Indian address of your own in Kerala and we forward it.

Sizing and shrinkage, before you order

Two things catch people out with Indian cotton, and both are easier to handle before the parcel leaves India than after. Sizing is Indian sizing — read the garment measurements in centimetres rather than trusting an S, M or L against what you wear at home, because the mapping is not the same. Unwashed cotton and khadi shrink, often noticeably on the first wash, and khadi softens and loses a little length as it settles. Where a size chart is given, order to the measurements.

This is also why we photograph every parcel as it arrives. You can see the colour and the cut before you pay to fly it, and swap something out while it is still in India and a domestic return is still possible.

Using your Indian address

Sign up free and you get an Indian delivery address with your own suite code. Use it at checkout the way an Indian customer would. We receive the parcel, photograph and weigh it, hold it free for 30 days, and combine it with anything else you have ordered into one box when you are ready. Returns and exchanges are easiest handled with the seller while the parcel is still in India, so do that before you ask us to ship.

Is FabIndia available in the USA, the UK or the Gulf?

The Indian address is the way in, and the case for it is stronger here than with most stores: FabIndia's Indian catalogue is far wider than anything carried abroad, and Indian prices are Indian prices. Cotton and khadi are also about the best thing you can forward — dense, flat, and light for their volume, so the chargeable weight stays close to the actual weight. Furniture and homeware are the opposite: bulky, and priced on the space they occupy rather than what they weigh. Put real dimensions into the calculator before committing to a large homeware order.

Cotton clothing is the cheapest thing to forward

Air freight charges on whichever is greater, the actual weight or the space the box takes up, worked out as length by width by height in centimetres divided by 5000. Cotton clothing is the best case on both counts: it is light, and it compresses, so once the retail polybags and cartons come off a stack of kurtas occupies very little. Four or five garments from a few different orders will usually travel as one small box. See how consolidation works for the arithmetic, or put your order into the calculator.