Every brand has a first print. Ours is a tiger — and it was old long before it was ours.
The Tibetan Tiger is the design that started Conscious Yoga Collective, still our most-loved print, and the one people ask about most: where it comes from, what it means, why the tiger looks the way it does. This is the field guide to all of that — the rug it descends from, the way we make ours, and how to choose your first one.
Where the Tibetan tiger comes from
For at least two centuries, monks and lamas in Tibet sat on tigers to meditate.
Not living ones. A tiger skin was the traditional seat of the tantric practitioner — the animal whose ferocity had been tamed and turned into a cushion for stillness. Real pelts were rare and expensive in the Himalayas, so from around the early nineteenth century Tibetan weavers began knotting them in wool instead: small rugs, roughly the size of a person sitting cross-legged, showing a tiger flattened out as if it had been laid on the floor. Head at the top, four paws splayed, stripes running the length of the body.
The rugs did two jobs. They were a seat for practice, and they were a statement about what practice is for — sitting calmly on top of the fiercest thing you know. In Buddhist terms the tiger stands for the wild, ego-driven mind, and the person sitting on it has quietened it. That is a very good thing to carry around with you, which is rather the point.
Almost nobody outside Tibet had seen one until the 1970s. When the London curator Mimi Lipton gathered 108 of them for The Tiger Rugs of Tibet at the Hayward Gallery in 1988, the exhibition toured Europe for four years and the tiger rug became, quite suddenly, one of the most collected textiles in the world. Fewer than 200 antique examples are thought to survive.
The weavers, interestingly, took three approaches. Some drew the whole tiger, whiskers and all. Some reduced it to nothing but its stripes — an abstract field of wavering lines, so modern-looking that people assume it is a twentieth-century design. And some drew pairs of tigers together, cheerful and round, which collectors call the "happy tigers".
What our tiger is
Ours is the first kind — the whole animal, flattened in the pelt form — and then we did something the rug makers never did: we set it in rows.
Look at a CYC Tibetan Tiger and you'll see a small, complete tiger — head, four paws, curling tail — repeated down the cloth between narrow vertical stripes, so the bag reads as striped from across the street and as tigers from arm's length. The stripe is a nod to the abstract rugs; the tiger is a nod to the pictorial ones; putting them together was the idea that became the brand.
The print is hand-printed in Rajasthan, several hundred kilometres and one mountain range from where the rugs were made, by workshops that have carved and printed patterns onto cotton for generations. Each tiger is placed by hand, which is why no two bags line up exactly: one tiger sits a fraction higher than its neighbour, a paw prints darker on one bag than the next, a stripe wavers where the block was lifted. Those small irregularities are how you know a person made it. The workshops are worth reading about on their own.
The Tibetan Tiger, in cotton and in velvet
We make the print two ways, and they are genuinely different objects.
Hand-block-printed cotton is the original and still the one most people start with. It is light, it breathes, and it goes in the washing machine — sand, sun cream and studio floors are all survivable. The cotton tote comes in twelve colourways, from the lilac in the photograph above to blue, green, black-and-grey and the orange-and-pink that has become something of a signature.
Cotton velvet is the plush version. The tiger sinks into the pile, the colour goes deeper, and the whole thing catches light as you move. It is spot-clean only and it costs a little more, and in return it feels like an occasion. If the bag is going from a hallway to a car to a restaurant, velvet is the better choice; if it is going to the beach, cotton is. We wrote a whole guide to choosing between the two — it comes down to one question about washing.
The Tibetan Tiger family
What started as one tote is now a full range, so the print can go from the studio to the airport without changing character.
The Tibetan Tiger Tote (from €39) is the original — an everyday cotton tote in twelve colours, big enough for a laptop and a yoga mat, and the bag most people buy first.
The Tibetan Tiger Tote in Velvet (from €65) is the same shape in plush quilted cotton velvet — the one to choose if it is coming out in the evening.
The Tibetan Tiger Weekender (from €66) and the Velvet Weekender (from €90) are carry-on sized for two- or three-night trips — 50 × 23 × 33 cm, which fits every major airline's cabin allowance. Our Carry-On Guide has the full table.
The Tibetan Tiger Yoga Bag (€52) and the Velvet Yoga Bag (€62) put the print on the piece that started CYC — a mat bag with an adjustable strap, sized for a standard 75 cm mat. If you are not sure yours will fit, our mat sizing guide will tell you.
The Tibetan Tiger Travel Set (from €40) is three nesting, plastic-lined pouches for the wash bag — the small one is the place for jewellery and chargers.
And for the house, the Velvet Tibetan Tiger Cushion (€35) is a 40 cm cushion cover in the same pile — the closest thing we make to the rug it came from.
Not every CYC tiger is a Tibetan tiger
We now make three tigers, and people do mix them up.
The Tibetan Tiger is the heritage one described here — the flattened pelt-form animal, in rows, between stripes. The Mouse Tiger is a modern, doodle-style silhouette our own team drew; it is playful where the Tibetan is solemn. And the Velvet Tiger is a bolder, more graphic stripe designed specifically for cotton velvet. If you want the one with the story, you want the Tibetan Tiger, and every product above is that print.
How to wear a tiger
The print is bold by design, which means it does the work in an outfit so the rest of you doesn't have to. With cream linen it looks like a holiday. With denim and a white t-shirt it disappears into the everyday. With head-to-toe black — especially the velvet — it reads as quietly expensive. And with tonal earth colours, cinnamon and terracotta and sandstone, the tiger feels grounded rather than loud, which is closer to the spirit of the rugs than anything else.
Where to start
If it is your first Tibetan Tiger, start with The Tibetan Tiger Tote in cotton — washable, twelve colours, the bag the brand was built on. If you want the heirloom, the velvet tote softens beautifully over years. And if you'd like to sit on a tiger the way the lamas did, the cushion is the honest answer.
Browse the full Tibetan Tiger collection →
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Tibetan tiger symbolise?
In Tibetan Buddhist practice the tiger stands for the wild, ego-driven mind. Tiger-skin seats — and later the woollen rugs that imitated them — were used by lamas for meditation, so the practitioner literally sat on top of the fiercest thing they knew. The print carries that meaning: protection, and calm on top of power.
Is the Tibetan Tiger a real Tibetan design?
The tiger itself is drawn from the pelt-form tigers on Tibetan meditation rugs, which were knotted in wool from around the early nineteenth century. Setting the tigers in rows between stripes is our own arrangement. The print is then hand-printed onto cotton in Rajasthan, India.
What is a Tibetan tiger rug?
A small hand-knotted wool rug, made in Tibet mostly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showing a tiger pelt either realistically or reduced to abstract stripes. They were used as meditation seats in monasteries and were almost unknown outside Tibet until a 1988 exhibition at London's Hayward Gallery. Fewer than 200 antique examples are thought to survive.
Is the Tibetan Tiger print hand-block-printed?
Yes. The cotton is hand-printed in Rajasthan and each bag is hand-quilted, which is why the tigers never line up identically from one bag to the next. Small variations are the signature of the craft, not a fault.
Which Tibetan Tiger bag should I buy first?
For most people, The Tibetan Tiger Tote in cotton — it is washable, comes in twelve colourways, and is the original CYC bag. Choose the velvet tote if it will mostly be used for evenings and occasions.
Can I wash a Tibetan Tiger bag?
Cotton pieces: yes — machine wash cool, line dry in the shade. Velvet pieces: no — spot-clean only, because a wash cycle crushes the pile. Our care guide covers both in detail.
Do you make the Tibetan Tiger print for the home?
Yes — the Velvet Tibetan Tiger Cushion is a 40 × 40 cm cover in the same cotton velvet as the bags, and it is the piece closest in spirit to the original rugs.
10% of profits to grassroots initiatives across India. Thank you for choosing slow.
With Love,
Conscious Yoga Collective
Continue reading: Reading the Prints, Reading the Leopard, Reading the Stripes, or What is Hand-Block-Printing?
