Sandhya Garg — Colour & Craft
Cities Known for Their Colour:
A Designer’s World Map
Jodhpur’s Blue · Jaipur’s Pink · Marrakech’s Red · Where My Prints Actually Come From · By Sandhya Garg, Project Runway Designer
Quick Answer
Several cities around the world are famous for a single dominant colour: Jodhpur and Chefchaouen for blue, Jaipur for pink, Izamal for mustard yellow, Marrakech for red-ochre, and Santorini and Tel Aviv for white. Each colour has a real history — royal welcome, craft tradition, climate, architecture — and each one has genuinely shaped how I design. Jaipur in particular is personal: it’s the city behind my Jaipur collection, and its famous pink was recently the subject of a Condé Nast Traveller cover story on the region’s craft legacy.
Do you love colour as much as I do? Travel is where every print in my collections begins — not a mood board, but an actual city, walked through and remembered. As a designer raised in India and trained in London, I’m endlessly enamoured by the way a place can be entirely defined by one colour — the architecture, the light, the dust in the air, all conspiring toward a single, overwhelming hue.
Below: six cities known for the colour they wear, the real history behind each one, and exactly how that palette shows up in my own prints — including the Jaipur collection named for the city that shaped me most.
In This Guide
The Blue Cities: Jodhpur & Chefchaouen
Jodhpur, Rajasthan — India’s Blue City and Sun City — is a place I know well; its indigo-painted houses give the feeling of walking through clouds. The colour is thought to have begun as a marker for Brahmin homes and a natural deterrent to termites and heat, and it has since become the city’s entire visual identity.
Chefchaouen, Morocco, founded as a kasbah in 1471, is known worldwide for its blue-rinsed buildings. Several theories explain the colour: that it once kept mosquitoes away, that Jewish refugees introduced it in the 1930s as a symbol of the sky and a reminder to live spiritually, or — per some locals — that it was simply mandated in the 1970s to attract tourism. All three stories persist, and no single one has been confirmed.
The Pink City: Jaipur
This one is personal. Jaipur was painted pink in 1876, under Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh I, to welcome Prince Albert of Wales — and the colour never left. Today it’s regularly repainted to preserve the walled Old City’s appearance, and it remains one of the most photographed colour signatures on earth.
It's also the city that gave my Jaipur collection its name. Condé Nast Traveller recently put Princess Gauravi Kumari of Jaipur on its cover, discussing exactly the shade I grew up around: “the Jaipur pink” she calls it, and the effort to keep Rajasthan’s craft traditions — block printing, blue pottery, hand embroidery — relevant to a global audience. That mission is, quite literally, my own label’s.
The Yellow City: Izamal
Izamal, Yucatán, is a small colonial city painted almost entirely in mustard yellow, also called the City of Hills — the "hills" being the remains of ancient sun-temple pyramids beneath its streets. The mustard cobblestone lanes are a quiet mirror of the warm marigold and saffron tones I return to constantly in my Indian-heritage prints, proof that colour instinct isn’t bound to one continent.
The White Cities: Santorini & Tel Aviv
Santorini — Thera in Greek — layers black volcanic earth against whitewashed cliffside homes and sleek Cycladic lines, a contrast that has drawn painters and poets for centuries. Its picture-perfect sunsets remain one of travel photography’s most reliable subjects for good reason.
Tel Aviv earns the same nickname for a completely different reason: over 4,000 buildings in the Bauhaus/International Style, built by German Jewish architects who emigrated in the 1930s. UNESCO named Tel Aviv’s "White City" a World Cultural Heritage site in 2003, recognising it as an outstanding example of early-20th-century town planning — the largest concentration of that architectural style anywhere in the world.
The Red City: Marrakech
Marrakech, Morocco, earned its "Red City" or "Ochre City" nickname from the red sandstone walls built under Ali ibn Yusuf around 1122–1123. It grew rapidly into a cultural, religious, and trading hub for the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa, and its Jemaa el-Fnaa remains the busiest square in Africa. If you love craft souks the way I do, Marrakech is unmatched — some of the finest local artisan shopping anywhere in the world.
Shop the World’s Colour · Artisanal · XS to 3XL
Every City, One Dress
Colour that started as a memory of a place — original prints in the exact palettes these six cities wear.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Jaipur called the Pink City?
Jaipur was painted pink in 1876 under Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh I to welcome Prince Albert of Wales, and the tradition of repainting the walled Old City pink has continued ever since, making it one of the world's most recognisable colour-branded cities.
Why are the buildings blue in Chefchaouen and Jodhpur?
Neither city has one confirmed origin. Jodhpur's blue is often linked to Brahmin housing traditions and natural insect and heat deterrence. Chefchaouen's blue is explained by several competing theories: mosquito deterrence, Jewish refugees introducing the colour in the 1930s as a spiritual symbol, or a 1970s tourism initiative. All persist without a single definitive answer.
What other cities are known for a single colour?
Beyond the six covered here, Izamal in Mexico's Yucatán is known for mustard yellow, Marrakech for red-ochre sandstone, and both Santorini and Tel Aviv are called "White City" for entirely different reasons — whitewashed cliffside architecture in one, Bauhaus urban planning in the other.
How do these cities influence Sandhya Garg's designs?
Directly — every original print in the collection begins as a real place, not an abstract mood board. The Jaipur collection is named for the Pink City itself; the Char Bagh print translates Mughal garden geometry found throughout Rajasthan; marigold and mustard tones echo both Izamal and Indian festival colour. Travel is the actual design process, not a marketing story.
Keep Reading
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Where Jaipur and Rajasthan meet Western silhouette.
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The Designer
About Sandhya Garg
Delhi, London, McQueen, Project Runway.
About the Writer
Sandhya Garg is a Project Runway Season 13 designer who won two challenges on the show and presented her collection at Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week. She studied womenswear at London College of Fashion and worked at Alexander McQueen, Gucci, Liberty London, and Alice Temperley. Her Los Angeles label creates limited-edition artisanal dresses and resort wear, with prints drawn directly from her travels, in sizes XS–3XL with custom sizing available.
Project Runway · Vogue · Condé Nast Traveller · XS–3XL
A city, remembered in colour.
Sandhya Garg is a Los Angeles boutique creating limited-edition artisanal dresses — original prints drawn from real places, from Jaipur’s pink to Rajasthan’s gardens. Sizes XS–3XL, custom sizing available.
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