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South Asian style past and present is showcased in a new installation for Bradford 2025

Published October 31, 2025

Nisbet Road Tailor Shop is the debut exhibition of fashion designer Zain Ali, which brings together never seen before archival textiles, historical photographs and original garments made by Ali.

The exhibition, on display at Loading Bay from 31 October to 23 November 2025, pays tribute to South Asian tailor shops and textile stores in Bradford, from a time when the city saw waves of migration from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh from the 1960s to the present day.  Out of these spaces emerged a new type of style rooted in British Asian culture and tells a story that is deeply rooted in Bradford’s history and textile heritage. 

Through Ali’s reimagining of a traditional tailor shop, this installation celebrates the evolution of British South Asian style. The exhibition gathers moving images, hand-woven garments, and a rare collection of wedding outfits, varying from embroidered lehengas, classic shalwar kameez and vintage georgette cholis. These pieces show how preferences for traditional motifs and customary handwoven textiles have changed over time, tracing the transformation of contemporary fashion within Bradford’s British Asian communities. 

This exhibition elevates the silenced histories of South Asian immigrants, and celebrates the role they played in powering the textile mills and factories of the north, and in turn, the growth and boom of the British textiles industries. We seldom know about the lives of the immigrants who came here except for the work they were defined by, and one way in which we can celebrate their resilience is appreciating who they were outside of their struggles, and we see their endearing personalities by the way that they dressed.

Outside of the work they did, these communities built up the rich and vast diversity of Bradford as we know it today. Local fabric stores and tailor shops became a central tenet to the ways in which British Asian style evolved. The exhibition is an artistic, playful and whimsical take on the interior of a tailor shop, where people can find a reflection of themselves through textiles, photographs and films in who they are and where they come from.
Zain Ali Artist
Nisbet Road Tailor shop commemorates the heritage of South Asian style and the traditional tailors that set up shop and became a big part of Bradford’s communities. This exhibition is a fresh look at how traditional style evolved in Bradford and elsewhere to shape and reflect British Asian cultural identities through the years.
Shanaz Gulzar Bradford 2025 Creative Director
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Image Credit: Andrew Benge