Narra Studio
A Filipino American social enterprise built from a single ask: a Kalinga weaver who asked someone to carry her fabric across the ocean — and a Harvard-trained museum director who said yes, and never stopped.
Shop Narra StudioNarra Studio is what it looks like when someone builds a bridge between worlds and then actually maintains it, year after year, community by community, one handwoven piece at a time.
The Founders
Katte Geneta
Founder & Director
Fast Facts
A Weaver Asked Her to Carry It Forward
Katte Geneta was born in New York and raised between New York City and Manila. She studied at Fordham College, originally intending to study medicine, before a fine arts class revealed a different path. She earned a Master’s in museum studies from Harvard — where she made the Dean’s List — while simultaneously raising two children, exhibiting as an artist, and serving as a museum director. She currently directs design and publications at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a nonprofit that grants over $1 million annually to American artists, architects, and writers.
The turning point came during her first pregnancy, when oil painting became difficult due to nausea. She turned to fiber arts and began studying Philippine weaving traditions — learning to spin farm-grown Philippine cotton by hand, immersing herself in the patterns and stories woven into traditional cloth. Then a conversation with a weaver from Kalinga, in the Cordillera mountains of Luzon, changed the shape of her life. The weaver asked Katte to offer her weaving in the United States. On October 26, 2019, Narra Studio opened in New York City.
“When I started exploring these beautiful fabrics, I couldn’t help but feel connected to the hands that wove them. I started weaving just to learn more about how our manghahabi create these beautiful pieces.”
Katte Geneta, Narra Studio Founder
Today, Narra Studio works with 18 indigenous communities across the Philippines — Kalinga, Yakan, Tboli, Mangyan, Ifugao, Itneg, Badjao, and more — as a direct-trade partner, not a middleman. The studio is located at 252 West 38th Street in Manhattan’s Garment District, open by appointment, and functions as an intimate working atelier. In addition to clothing, jewelry, and goods, the studio offers garment fittings, textile conservation consultations, and made-to-order barongs.
The brand’s social impact is documented and specific: food and rice donations during COVID-19, typhoon relief for Cagayan Valley, pre-natal care sponsorships, financial assistance to Ifugao weavers during the pandemic, and the construction of the Tboli Ubo Community Center and Learning Library. Narra Studio has been covered by NBC New York, Vogue, Nylon, Tatler Asia, and Preview Philippines, and Geneta has been named a Fellow of the SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies and a Visiting Artist and Scholar at the American Academy in Rome.
Why We Featured Them
What Makes Narra Studio Different
01
The Origin Story Is the Editorial
Narra Studio didn’t begin as a business plan. It began when a Kalinga weaver asked a Filipino American woman in New York to carry her work across the ocean. That single conversation captures the entire diaspora experience: the longing for connection, the asymmetry of access, and the possibility that one person can bridge both worlds.
02
Eighteen Communities, Not One Aesthetic
Narra Studio works with 18 distinct indigenous communities — Tboli, Yakan, Mangyan, Badjao, Itneg, Kalinga, and others. At a time when ‘Filipiniana’ risks being flattened into one look, Narra insists on the specificity and diversity of Philippine craft traditions.
03
A Museum Director Running an Atelier
Katte Geneta holds a Harvard master’s, directs one of America’s most prestigious arts nonprofits, has exhibited internationally, and was a Visiting Scholar in Rome — and she runs a made-to-order atelier on the 15th floor of a Garment District building.
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