As told toHouse of Jaya
“I feel like I created the class and the clothing line for the little girl that exists in me.”
Before House of Jaya was a Chicago-area fashion label, Julie Thomas Achettu spent more than two decades in education, including as a high school English teacher. She traces the label’s beginnings to the Asian American literature course she created while teaching in Chicago Public Schools and first taught in 2014.
Years later, the same questions about identity and belonging moved from books to clothing. She went on to co-found House of Jaya with Shveta Sahu, an India-based marketer and entrepreneur.
A student gave her the nudge she needed.
This was around 2011. I had already been thinking about creating an Asian American literature course for a while, but life got in the way. I was teaching five classes, grading, being a mom. And I wasn’t sure anyone would take it.
I had a student who mentioned that she would be interested in the class, and I didn’t act on it right away. The following year, she gave me another gentle push: “You need to get started before I graduate.” By then, I had been sitting on the idea and developing my own identity. I finally felt like I had grown confident enough to actually do it.
And that student gave me something else I needed. It was like: Hey, someone will take this class if I make it.
As told to India Currents Studio. This account is drawn from an interview conducted in August 2026 and written follow-up responses from Achettu. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.
IBetween worlds
School door, home door
I grew up with immigrant parents, going through the American school system. You have to navigate those identities — going to school, coming back to a different home.
My mom came [to the U.S.] in the seventies. There was a nursing shortage in America, so she came first and then sponsored my dad and my brother. My brother and I are five years apart because my parents were apart. I was the only one born and raised here of all my first cousins. Even my brother was born in India.
They did the best they could. But I was a brown woman raised to be quiet. I was living a different life at school versus at home. I knew how to code-switch. It was in the body language and in some of the conversations we would have. What I could wear.
It was that idea that children should be seen and not heard.
The love was there. They loved me. And I’m actually okay with it now.
IIWho would take it
Building the course
What I felt internally was that no one would take my class. In college, I had never read any required readings about people who looked like me. This was the nineties, so I didn’t know: if I created this class, who would take it?
If there was one thing I was genuinely good at as a teacher, it was research. My master’s and doctorate were both drenched in it. I was by myself. There was a lot of reading, a lot of research, then creating assignments and making sure the assessments showed that students were learning.
I spent 2013 developing it and getting approval. I remember color-coding it: the essential questions and the objectives, what we would do each quarter, whether it would be thematic or chronological.
The program director who submitted the curriculum came back and told me the board said it was one of the most organized and detailed curricula they had seen. One of the assistant principals told me she was going to use mine as an example, and they wanted access to it so they could show other people. All of that built my confidence. The hard work paid off.
Then I taught the course for the first time in 2014. I made so many mistakes along the way. That pilot course, I was almost winging it. I had the research. I did everything I was supposed to do. But I was learning, too.
IIIThe map
She ran out of room
When I was doing my research, I wanted to decorate the classroom for the Asian American students and also the non-Asian students taking the course. I went looking for an Asia-centric map. At the time, in 2013 or 2014, I could not find one. Not on Google. It was impossible to buy one.
So I made it into a lesson. I had my students take out a sheet of paper and draw the seven continents from memory. I knew what they were going to draw. Then I said, “Hey, you all drew the exact same map.”
What if I showed you the map upside down? What if South America were front and center? What if Africa were front and center? I had them draw different versions of a world map to post during back-to-school night so people could look at the world through multiple perspectives.
There was so much frustration. One student said, “My brain hurts.” One student even had to cut out another piece of paper and tape it onto the side because there wasn’t enough room for the other countries.
You cannot draw the map any other way without help. That’s how ingrained [the Eurocentric view of the world] is. Julie Thomas Achettu
One student raised their hand and asked, “But isn’t it easier to have one map?” I had to really sit with that.
I ended up saying: it would be easier to have one language in this world, too. But we don’t. There’s beauty in having all these different languages and all these different cultures and all these different identities. So can’t we have a few different maps?
IVThe clothes I wanted to wear
How would I represent both sides of myself?
You can learn about identity and dual identity and read stories and history and literature all day long. But it doesn’t just exist inside books. What you wear is also an identity statement.
I remember trying to recruit students for my class. I wore an Indian outfit, and I had five or six students who were interested in taking the class wear their cultural outfits. But how would I represent both sides of myself? I wanted to wear clothing that represented my dual identity, and I wanted it to be seamless.
I had taken a clothing and design course in high school. I remember making palazzo pants. In the nineties, I bought a paisley pattern and made something for a friend for her birthday. It had never occurred to me that I could really do that. It didn’t feel like it was in my realm to deviate and become a fashion designer. In my culture, everyone was becoming doctors, lawyers or engineers. I was already deviating by becoming a teacher because I loved stories.
That class should have been an indicator that design sparked my interest. But I must have pushed it down. “Be whatever you want to be” wasn’t really part of my everyday life.
Later, I started upcycling my traditional saris. There was one my father had bought me. I couldn’t wear it again. It was too traditional. My mom even told me, “Nobody wears this anymore.” But I couldn’t get rid of it either, because it was the last one he brought me.
So I made it into a jumpsuit. I feel like it will now survive until the end of time, or at least until the next decade. I wear it all the time.
People would ask me what I’m wearing and where I got it from, and it opened the doors to education and cultural appreciation. Julie Thomas Achettu
What I wear, and when people ask me about it, is a conversation starter. It’s my moment to educate someone else. It became another education platform.
VThe person I needed
Two chairs, one table
I needed someone who lives in India. I live here [in the U.S.], but I’m getting the fabric made there.
I met Shveta Sahu at a dinner and told her my story — the maps, Asian American literature. That story resonated with her. I already had the idea clearly in my head: the gap in fusion clothing, the dual-identity mission. But what I needed was someone like Shveta who understood how to actually build a brand people would find and trust.
She gives me the education I never had about the fabric and the artisans who make it. She can tell me about motifs that I may not have seen living here, and the story behind a particular fabric. She knew that better than me. I had the authenticity of what would work here in America and what clients here like to see and wear every day. She had the background that I needed that complemented my story.
After we met, I decided to make a pitch deck for her. Here’s the story. Here’s the idea. Here are the groups I think might be our competitors. Here’s the real gap. When I put together that first pitch deck, I was already thinking about her as the marketing lead and chief of operations.
We were still at the very beginning. We had the pitch deck, the business plan, the mission statement and the vision, but nothing tangible yet. We didn’t even have the name. We didn’t have manufactured products. What we had was ideas, content and a lot of excited conversation.
Then we paused around the pandemic. But House of Jaya was always in the back of my mind.
VIPassing it on
Leaving the classroom
By 2024, people were returning to normal life, and I felt like I shouldn’t give up on House of Jaya. I also felt ready to move on from teaching, and I made sure to leave Asian American literature in capable hands before I stepped away. That was important: I wasn’t leaving it; I was passing it forward.
I resigned in August 2024. I had been teaching part-time or full-time over the years depending on what was happening with my family, but by that point I knew I couldn’t give House of Jaya what it needed on a teacher’s schedule. I was traveling to India, waking up early for calls, staying up late for texts across time zones. Teaching just doesn’t bend that way.
I had these opportunities, and I finally felt this confidence, and I didn’t want to leave that behind. There are so many girls out there who lack confidence the way I did growing up. I wanted to continue to educate.
I had been to Milaan Foundation events before. The girls Milaan works with are living in areas in rural India where gender-based violence and child marriage are common. Milaan recruits girls to its program and educates them, and when they graduate, they want to go back to their villages and recruit more girls. I wanted to support that.
Shveta was on board from the very beginning. The commitment to give something from day one wasn’t up for debate for either of us. Today, House of Jaya donates a small percentage of every sale to Milaan. What we give will grow as we grow.
And it has gone beyond the business relationship for me personally. I sit on Milaan’s board now.
VIIDay one
Curtain up
I consider House of Jaya officially launched on September 13, 2025, at The Silk Road: A NYFW Runway Experience in New York. That’s the moment it stopped being an idea and a pitch deck and became a real, public brand. We barely made it. The shipment came in a few days before.
Today, I handle sales. Shveta handles marketing and operations. We work with an accounting firm for the financial side, and we have a technical designer. The three of us — Shveta, our technical designer and me — design and finalize every piece together.
I think real success in fusion fashion takes longer than a year. But if I’m looking at what would tell me this early stage worked, it’s really three things coming together: the business being financially sustainable enough that we’re not sitting in a room again wondering whether we should close; being able to grow what we give to Milaan the way we always said we would as the company grows; and hearing directly from customers — women telling me that House of Jaya gave them something they didn’t have growing up.
That last one is really the whole point. The business surviving matters, the giving matters, but knowing it actually reached someone the way I wished it had reached me as a kid — that’s the real victory.
I feel like I created the class and the clothing line for the little girl that exists in me, because she needed it back then. Julie Thomas Achettu
From the Milaan Foundation
House of Jaya’s relationship with the Milaan Foundation now extends beyond the donation from each sale, which supports Milaan’s Girl Icon Program. Achettu serves on Milaan’s board, and House of Jaya is the official fashion partner for Milaan’s 2026 AMPLIFY Gala in Chicago.
We asked the foundation’s founder and CEO, Dhirendra Pratap Singh, what he hopes people understand about the girls Milaan works with, what the Women of Impact Circle represents on the AMPLIFY runway, and why House of Jaya felt like the right partner.
When people hear “girls’ education,” what do they miss?
These are not girls waiting to be rescued.
People often hear “girls’ education” and picture something narrow: getting a girl into a classroom seat.
What gets missed is everything that has to happen before and after that. The resistance from family and community that a girl has to work through just to enroll, and then the leadership she has to build once she is inside, because showing up is not the same as thriving.
The Girl Icon Program is not just about attendance; it is about building girls into the kind of people who bring 20 others through the door behind them. That is the part I would most want readers to sit with: these are not girls waiting to be rescued. They are already leading. Our job is to give that leadership room to grow, not to invent it.
What is the idea behind the Women of Impact Circle runway at AMPLIFY?
The runway is a metaphor made physical.
Every woman walking in the Women of Impact Circle has her own story of leadership, and every step she takes in House of Jaya couture is meant to visually connect her journey to the journey of the girls Milaan supports — girls like Aisha, who became the first in her village to go to school and then brought 20 others with her.
We wanted an experience where the audience is not just hearing statistics about girls’ education; they are watching living proof of what happens when a woman is given room to lead, standing right next to the next generation of leaders who are just getting started. It is less a fashion show and more a passing of the torch, staged in fabric and choreography instead of words.
Why did House of Jaya feel like the right partner?
Julie did not just write a check.
Julie did not just write a check for that mission. Julie sits on Milaan’s board, and House of Jaya built girls’ education into the company from day one. When a brand’s whole reason for being is representation and identity, and Milaan’s is helping girls build the confidence to claim their own, it was a natural fit.
Responses provided in writing by Dhirendra Pratap Singh, founder and CEO of Milaan Foundation, August 2026. Edited for length.
India Currents Studio
What could we make with you?
If your organization has something it wants Indian American audiences to understand, trust or act on, we can help shape the right story and campaign.
You don’t need a brief or a finished idea.
Want to learn more first? See how the Studio works.
About the partner
House of Jaya
House of Jaya is a Chicago-area fashion label founded by Julie Thomas Achettu and Shveta Sahu. Its clothing pairs Indian textiles, motifs and craft traditions with contemporary American silhouettes, drawing on the experience of living across cultures rather than choosing between them.
A portion of every purchase supports Milaan Foundation’s Girl Icon Program, and House of Jaya is the official fashion partner for Milaan’s 2026 AMPLIFY Gala on October 3 at House of Blues Chicago.
See what happens next.
The companion piece
Five moves behind the label, decision by decision.Disclosure
This story was produced by India Currents Studio in collaboration with House of Jaya. House of Jaya participated in the reporting and reviewed the piece for factual accuracy. Milaan Foundation responded to questions in writing. The India Currents newsroom had no role in its production.