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Essay · 18 February 2026 · 4 min read

The name
in two scripts.

अरात्रिक्काज़ ↔ Aratrikkaz. On the pronunciation, the doubled k, the small z, and a daughter growing up between two alphabets.

Champagne embroidered crop top with drape skirt and navy gold cape — editorial reference
Atelier reference from the current Aratrikkaz catalogue.

The name of the atelier sits on the page in two scripts, one above the other. अरात्रिक्काज़ on top, in Devanagari, in the champagne we use only for the wordmark. Aratrikkaz beneath, in Roman, in the small uppercase letter-spacing that holds the breath. They are the same word. They are also two different inheritances, set the same size, on purpose.

The pronunciation is uh-rah-TREE-kaz. The stress is on the third syllable. The first vowel is a soft schwa, not a long “ah”. The double k is a soft doubling rather than a hard one — the tongue touches twice but does not snap. The final z is voiced, not a soft s. I am being this specific because I have spent eleven years in Australia watching people try to say Indian names without being told how, and the most generous thing a brand can do for a non-Indian reader is to spell the sound out plainly.

Why the doubled k and the final z. The doubled k is in there because the Devanagari अरात्रिक्काज़ doubles in the mouth at that point — the sound is closer to “trik-kaa” than to “tri-kaa”, and I did not want to soften the consonant for an English keyboard. The final z is the small diaspora marker. In an Australian classroom Aratrikka will become “the Aratrikkaz” the first time a teacher pluralises her name — a class of one, but a class. The plural is the inheritance. It is also the universalising move: the atelier is for her and for the everyone-else who shares her crossing.

Both of her languages on the label, dignified, the same size on the page.

I think a great deal about what Aratrikka will see when she is old enough to read what is above the door. She will see the script her grandmother reads in the morning newspaper, and the script her teacher writes on the whiteboard, sitting one above the other without one having to apologise for the other. That is the whole brand, in two lines. That is what I want every daughter who walks into one of our pieces to feel: that both of her languages are already on the label, already dignified, already the same size on the page.

The bilingual wordmark is, technically, a small design decision. It is also, for me, the part of the brand I would refuse to compromise on. The Devanagari does not shrink at small sizes. The champagne does not turn beige. The two scripts stay paired, even on a courier label, even on a receipt, even on the inside hem-tag of a finished piece. If you ever receive a parcel from us where the Devanagari is missing or shrunken, that parcel did not leave the atelier — and I would like you to tell me.

There will be a Tuesday, some years from now, when Aratrikka writes her own name on a school book in Roman in the morning and again in Devanagari in the evening, without either one feeling like the translation of the other. The atelier is named for that Tuesday.

— Ketki / Melbourne, February 2026

ATELIER NOTE · NAME · BILINGUAL

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