How UP Warriorz is designing its identity through uniform

Fashion’s relationship with the concept of a uniform has always been pragmatic. At its most basic, it reduces choice and distraction. At its most consequential, it highlights  identity, signalling who belongs, who represents, and who carries collective meaning.

The UP Warriorz jersey belongs firmly to the second category.

UP Warriorz and the work of being seen

In sport, uniforms operate as visual contracts. They collapse individual presence into collective purpose, giving audiences a stable image to attach loyalty to. Men’s sport has had decades to refine this grammar, allowing colour and symbol to settle into public memory through repetition. Women’s cricket—especially in India—has rarely been afforded the same. Identity is still being built alongside competition, leaving the jersey to do much of the work before legacy can.

“Cultural representation matters across everything we do, and the jersey is one of the most visible ways we express it,” says Deepti Sharma, World Cup–winning all-rounder. “It allows us to carry our roots into the present—not as decoration, but as identity.”

That emphasis on representation is not incidental. Built without the legacy of a men’s IPL counterpart, UP Warriorz is a women’s cricket team competing in the Women’s Premier League (WPL), representing Uttar Pradesh. In this context, identity is treated as authorship—it is constructed deliberately and reinforced through repetition rather than assumed.

Where women’s cricket in India builds meaning

“Visual authorship determines how a sport is seen, remembered, and respected,” explains Jinisha Sharma, Director at Capri Sports. “Claiming that authorship is how women’s sport, and UP Warriorz with it, defines what comes next.”

In this context, the collaboration with Ekaya Banaras reads less as a fashion intervention and more as a structural decision. “We usually work with handwoven Banarasi textiles where detail and intricacy are a big part of the process,” says Palak Shah, CEO of Ekaya Banaras. “With sportswear, especially a jersey, you have to practise a lot of restraint.”

With its 120-year Banarasi legacy, Ekaya represents a lineage shaped by intricacy, labour, and time. Its history informs how the brand approaches the present. Rather than treating craft as static inheritance, Ekaya has consistently positioned Banarasi weaving as a craft that gains relevance when it evolves and enters new contexts. The label’s collaboration with UP Warriorz reflects this belief. Culture, here, is not protected by remaining unchanged, but by being allowed to move.

Shah notes that Ekaya does not treat its design language as site-specific. Designing for women’s sportswear required editing back and testing how Banarasi heritage could function within a context shaped by performance and repetition.

“We looked at Banarasi motifs that are usually very elaborate on a saree and asked ourselves how to simplify and translate them so they still felt recognisable, but suited a garment made for sport,” she adds.

The franchise’s visual and cultural stance is mirrored in its partnerships with beauty brands such as L’Oréal and Joy, who align with UP Warriorz in ways that treat women athletes as part of the sport’s public architecture rather than its promotional surface.

In women’s cricket, where visibility often arrives before memory, the jersey becomes one of the few markers where meaning can be built to last.