Feel of the fabric
Dolly Sagar

WITH more than 5,000 fashion designers in the Indian fashion industry, new-comers are always eager to change gears to get more clientele. Result? Instead of changing the fall of the salwar-kameez, innovating the flare of the skirts, or embroidering the age-old sari, they are trying to get the special advantages of the multitude of fabrics in India.

According to these fashion maestros, what is important for a person in a fashionable attire is the feel he gets, as well as the look. "The accent is now on the texture and weave, instead of the cut and design of the apparel", observes Radhika Nagpal, a design consultant with several fashion houses. "The fabric needs to give a second skin effect".

Now in 2008 the traditional weavers of our heritage — the Varanasi brocade, Bengal and Andhra handlooms and silk jamavars — are being asked to innovate and resurrect the fabric with the label of being exclusive to the designer.

Designers Krishna Bhatia and Kamla Kathuria, with 60 outlets in 12 countries, pay much attention to ‘reinventing’ these special fabrics. They succeeded in making quilted and crinkled silk for their 2006 collections, and in 2008 they are concentrating on sand-washed tussar. Nazrene David is another experimenter, who feels that the new fabric textures are important for the feel and speaks of two years’ experiment with the different weavers to produce a new fabric combining silk and khadi for her exclusive products. She found it necessary to mix threads of varied tensions like superior cotton and muga silk to get this special fabric, as she proudly displays her creations, which looks especially grand with muted yellows/vibrant pinks sewn in concert with muted designs. To achieve this she had to go to the remote village of Dhulia in West Bengal to get weavers, who had shifted their base from Tangail in Bangladesh. The problem here was that they were essentially sari weavers, and for this kind of contemporary work, Nazrene had to upgrade their skills.

Similarly, Chandrika Modi had to convey the conceptions to her weavers in far-off Kota in Rajasthan, Kutch in Gujarat and Karhapur in Andhra Pradesh through paper drawings. One of her widely appreciated creations was the Banarsi silk tissue net for lehenga-cholis and saris. But she is proud of her success in revamping the 100-year-old tradition of Varanasi jacquard brocade to suit modern fashion requirements.

As Rani Barua a young designer, states: "Fashion designing has become more complicated. If you use different fabrics, the same design appears more exotic, and with the silhouettes and look staying the same, the new fabric gives life to the designs. Otherwise, the only way for designers, who cannot innovate, is to depend on old books, private collections and museum pieces to give a novel contemporary look. Thanks to modern entrants from the various fashion institutes, nowadays designing does not mean merely cutting and sewing, but also the innovation of new textures in fabric".

Of late the ancient fashions and dress materials of China have brought in a special kind of brocade (without dragons and other Chinese symbols) to provide uppers that can be worn over pants and net lehengas. Here the centuries-old style of embroidery fits in very well with these fabrics to make really marvellous maharaja coats and stylish kurtas. — MF