NAAW Press Kit

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Everything a journalist needs to write about NAAW, in one place. All copy on this page may be reproduced without permission. For images, interviews or samples, get in touch.

At a glance

Boilerplate — short

NAAW is an Indian sneaker brand founded in 2026 by Adnan Yeolawala. Built around traditional Indian craft — Kantha and Zari stitching, Kasuti and Chikankari embroidery — NAAW makes sneakers by hand, for people who want to wear where they are from. Every sneaker has a story.

Boilerplate — long

NAAW is a handcrafted sneaker brand founded on 7 April 2026 by Adnan Yeolawala, then 22. The brand launched after nearly three years of development, during which Yeolawala worked through design, materials, manufacturing and branding before committing to a first collection.

NAAW’s collections draw on Indian textile traditions — the running stitch of Bengal’s Kantha, the metallic thread work of Zari, Karnataka’s Kasuti embroidery and the white-on-white Chikankari of Lucknow — and set them on a contemporary streetwear silhouette. The brand’s position is that an Indian sneaker should not be a Western shoe with a motif added to it, but a shoe whose identity is Indian to begin with.

NAAW sneakers are sold directly at wearnaaw.com in UK sizes 6 to 10, priced between ₹3,900 and ₹3,960.

Founder bio — short

Adnan Yeolawala is the founder of NAAW, a handcrafted Indian sneaker brand he launched in April 2026 at the age of 22, after nearly three years of building it. Full profile.

Founder bio — long

Adnan Yeolawala is an Indian entrepreneur and the founder of NAAW. He launched the brand on 7 April 2026, at 22.

He studied at St. Xavier High School and was drawn to fashion, sneakers and creativity growing up — but not to following what everyone else was doing. NAAW began as a question: why can’t a sneaker be more than just a sneaker?

It was not a quick idea. Yeolawala spent close to three years on it before launch, with no factory, no large team and no finished plan. The first sample was full of small mistakes; he treated them as lessons rather than failures, and remade samples until each was better than the last. One of the hardest parts was finding skilled karigars who understood the level of detailing and finishing the brand wanted — a search that took time, conversations and testing. He describes those three years as the foundation of the company, and the launch as “only the part people see”.

His stated ambition is to build NAAW into a brand that represents Indian creativity internationally, without growth costing the brand its craftsmanship. Read the full founder profile.

How NAAW sneakers are made

By hand. Cutting, stitching, assembling and finishing are done by skilled karigars, and every pair carries the effort of the people who made it. Where most footwear is designed to be produced as fast as possible, NAAW is deliberately built the other way.

Yeolawala treats the small variations between pairs as the point rather than a defect — evidence of a hand rather than a machine, and the reason no two pairs are identical.

Quotes

Attributable to Adnan Yeolawala, Founder, NAAW:

NAAW is not just a sneaker brand. NAAW is a thought.

The launch is only the part people see. The real journey started much earlier.

Instead of seeing those mistakes as failures, I started looking at them as lessons.

The small imperfections are part of what makes every pair personal. And that’s something I don’t want to hide.

You don’t need everything figured out. You just need to keep moving.

The craftsmanship stays. The attention to detail stays. The story stays. Because if we ever lose that, then NAAW becomes just another sneaker brand.

The crafts

• Kantha — Bengal’s running-stitch embroidery, originally a way of quilting worn saris into new cloth. Background.
• Zari — metallic thread work long associated with Surat and Varanasi.
• Kasuti — the counted-thread embroidery of Karnataka.
• Chikankari — Lucknow’s white-on-white shadow embroidery.

Current range

Six sneakers are on sale: NAAW Kasuti Red, NAAW Zari Denim, NAAW Zari (Mocha Brown), and Naaw Kantha Zari in Tan, Blue and Olive Green. Four more — NAAW ROOH, NAAW NEELKANTH, NAAW Chikenkadi Purple and Naaw Kantha Zari (Chocolate Brown) — are announced and not yet released. See the full range.

Brand assets

• NAAW logo — PNG with transparent background
• Product photography, founder portraits and additional assets on request: support@wearnaaw.com

Media contact

Adnan Yeolawala, Founder
support@wearnaaw.com
wearnaaw.com · @naaw_official