Sari: 21st century designs
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The Sari in 2017
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
Red handloom sari with cape
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
Delhi-based designer David Abraham, one half of the Abraham & Thakore label, says he remembers his Syrian Christian grandmother changing out of her white chatta munda into richly coloured Kanjeevarams on special occasions. "I remember in particular a beautiful sapphire blue sari with a self border that she would wear," he says. It was the question of identity that made him experiment with the sari-cut it, style it, reinvent it. For Abraham & Thakore, who have made both stitched and unstitched versions of the sari, it is a long piece of untouched fabric, which could represent a regional culture, could be a uniform for work, or even a metaphor for steamy sex.
And as the fashion weeks enter another Autumn/ Winter cycle, more saris, draped in unconventional ways, are expected on the runways. Identity is an important question in today's age where high-street fashion brands like Zara and H&M are making the world a place of homogenised identities. So a culturally significant clothing like the sari is back in the urban closet with a bang.
Recently, the sari's emergence as the new fashion statement was unfairly described as nationalistic promotion in a piece by Asgar Qadri in The New York Times: "...the Banarasi sari, the traditional garment known for its fine silk and opulent embroidery, and primarily worn by Hindu women." The article, 'In India, Fashion Has Become a Nationalist Cause', took a myopic view of a garment that represents cultures criss-crossing many religions and identities.
Bomber shirt and a denim pant-style sari
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
(Bomber shirt and a denim pant-style sari; Designer: Arjun Saluja; Model: Artist and writer Mithu Sen; Photo: M Zhaho)
Yet, in the sari's revival as an aspirational garment, the force of nostalgia is perhaps often underestimated. The past, with the possibilities it contains for the future, is what has made many designers turn to the sari. They have experimented with drapes, styles and even the blouse, which is a parallel narrative and a statement piece in itself, one that can become a game changer for the sari-like a bomber jacket, a cape or a cropped shirt.
The sari has a global parallel. In 2015, Japanese musician Yoshiki, internationally recognised as the leader and co-founder of heavy metal group X Japan, announced his kimono brand, Yoshikimono. The first collection featured a range of 'rock star kimonos', featuring unorthodox prints and unusual obi wraps on body-hugging kimonos, slashed to miniskirt length and paired with stilettos, leather collars and high-heeled boots.�?�
Perhaps that's the trajectory the Indian sari, a garment that never followed the normative sartorial choice, is now following. Draupadi's 'unending fabric of time', as Rta Kapur Chishti described it in her 2010 book Saris of India-Tradition and Beyond, has made a comeback on the runways. It is competing effortlessly with high-street fashion and haute couture, with designers trying to channel nostalgia and futuristic vision simultaneously. Like Japan, which rediscovered the kimono through stalwarts like Yohji Yamamato and Rei Kawakubo, who defied western fashion's stereotypical forecasts by evolving the kimono, India seems to be going through an interesting fashion churn. These days, designers are turning the sari into an aspirational, almost revolutionary choice of garment.
Gold foillaminated khadi sari and gold calligraphy applique on khadi coat, styled with a white handwoven shirt
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
(Gold foillaminated khadi sari and gold calligraphy applique on khadi coat, styled with a white handwoven shirt. Designer: Abraham and Thakore; Model: Artist and teacher Manmeet Devgun)
Since 2006, there has been a revival of the quintessential sari, which is still the most-worn garment in India but which has lost its appeal among the 'smart set'. In 2009, Kolkata-based Sabyasachi Mukherjee, one of the most successful designers out of India, launched a 'Save the Sari' project. In 2011, French couture designer Hermes entered the Indian market with 28 handcrafted saris, priced at about Rs 4.5 lakh each-proving the tenacity of the sari as a muse. In 2017, there are more designers than ever who are experimenting with the garment.
Social media is abuzz with talk of the iconic sari-Twitter features the #100saripact, while Facebook has any number of groups devoted to it, like Kaithari, For the Love of Sari, Sadee Sari and The Magic of Saris. The sari is now also a digital revolution and remains the only garment in India that still retains heirloom value. Fashion weeks in the past few years have proved this, with designers either presenting collections that include saris, or presenting only saris. Like Anavila Sidhu Mishra, who is now pushing the envelope in terms of making the sari contemporary with different kinds of drapes and styling.
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
(Anavila gold zari border linen sari paired with a raw silk top and necklace; Designer: Sari by Anavila, top by Payal Khandwala, necklace by Cult curator; Model: Journalist and writer Smita Nair; Photo: Mandar Deodhar)
From veterans like Abraham and Thakore to the new bunch of designers passionate about traditional weaves and crafts-a prime example being Gunjan Jain of Vriksh, a label that specialises in Odisha weaves like bomkai and ikat-designers are trying to understand and present the sari in ways that can compete with other silhouettes like the gown. "The return of the sari is part of a much larger conversation on identity," says Abraham. And that identity is of a defiant Draupadi in the face of the male gaze, in a world increasingly experiencing polarisation between masculine and feminine with the great churning of cultural ethos and other socio-economic changes.
"The deep involvement and sense of identity Indian women associate with the sari has made them resist the pressure to change their style of dress, inadvertently providing continuity in the weaving tradition in every part of the country," says Chishti. It is that possibility of the future that made her travel across the country documenting the sari a few years ago. There was much folklore and many myths about the sari that made it a lived garment with motifs like bitter gourd and fish woven into the bomkai, which depicted living memory via design directories of weavers. And today, in its evolution, the sari has become more aggressive, with the Google Culture Institute and Border & Fall, an online fashion portal, documenting at least 80 drapes.
Banarasi silk sari paired with a sequinned jacket; Designer: Sari by Sanjay Garg
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
(Banarasi silk sari paired with a sequinned jacket; Designer: Sari by Sanjay Garg, jacket by Peachoo; Model: Celebrity hair stylist Sapna Bhavnani; Photo: Mandar Deodhar)
Chishti, who runs the Sari School in Delhi-which teaches participants about the history and the roughly 108 ways of draping a sari-says that it is more than just a personal garment. "In the 1970s, if one went to college wearing a sari, it was a statement of having 'come of age'... just as the wearing of jeans is today. The urban wearing style is a post-1870s phenomenon. The sari went through various stages of resembling the hobble skirt and the gown."
Paromita Banerjee Sarkar, 33, remembers her mother picking her up from kindergarten when she was a child-Sarkar would hold her mother's hand, and also the end of her sari pallu, while walking alongside. Her earliest memories of the sari were therefore those of assurance and security-if she held on to the end of her mother's pallu, it seemed, her mother would always be there to protect her. Today, Sarkar, a graduate of the National Institute of Design (NID), is a Kolkata-based designer who works with crafts and textiles. She is currently trying to stake a claim to the sari on her own terms.
Sarkar says that years ago, while she was still at NID, she began to wonder about the changes the sari was going through. The future of the sari, she believes, will be one in which it stops being a statement and returns to being a natural and everyday garment without trying too hard. More so, Sarkar says, because it is one of the oldest unstitched drapes known to us. "We work on classics and not on trends or colour forecasts, so you can wear our saris again and again over the years," she says. "The saris can be styled to suit a particular occasion and can be dressed up or down with the right accessories. Most of the times, the urban woman is not buying a sari keeping in mind any specific occasion."
Handwoven silk sari from Odisha
Chinki Sinha , And it’s a wrap “India Today” 4/12/2017
(Handwoven silk sari from Odisha; Designer: Gunjan Jain; Model: Poet and artist Astha Mittal; Photo: Rajwant Rawat)
In 2006, Abraham and Thakore presented their first version of the sari-a black jamdaani catering to the western notions of minimalism. They had woven everyday motifs like cyclerickshaws-and the particular outfit that opened the runway show in Delhi wound up being acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Ten years later, the Houndstooth sari by the designer duo, paired with a long-sleeved shirt and belts, was part of a curated show called The Fabric of India. Held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2015-2016, curators Rosemary Crill and Divia Patel brought together the rich textile history of the sari and its contemporary collection. The show featured the Abraham and Thakore sari in black and white checks, contrasted with bright lemon yellow. The curators say the show intended an exploration into how "textile traditions are being included within the dynamic industry" and how the sari is being updated. "I remember when the handloom sari was representative of the old traditional mindset-aunties wore saris. Then, to my mind, it represented a mindset that was arty, somewhat left of centre and was often teamed with Kolhapuri chappals and a jhola. Now, suddenly the sari has become 'fashion'. It can be 'fashion', it can be something an edgy young woman wears belted with a corset, or a man-style shirt. This is wonderful," says Abraham.
And it isn't just the handloom enthusiasts who have taken up the sari. Others too, like Arjun Saluja-who owns the label Rishta and is a master of pattern cutting, forever experimenting with drapes and structures-have done their own versions of the stitched sari as urban street wear, avant garde or even a performance-costume like garment. Saluja is perhaps the most experimental when it comes to channeling the potential of the sari-his stitched garments take the form of Hakama pant style or even dhoti-wraps, which are paired with bomber and leather jackets. In many ways, this marks a crossover point for the sari.
When Sanjay Garg, who is known for his handwoven saris (under his label, Raw Mango), first arrived on the scene with his bright-bordered Chanderi saris, nobody could predict he would become the man behind the "coming of age" of the sari in urban India, with his revival of traditional saris. His play with what he calls Indian minimalism is what makes his vision grand. Using colours like rani pink, sharbati, lime green, reds and yellows, he says he had always wanted to write a story nobody had written before. The sari, dismissed as 'occasion wear' until a few years ago, was his muse. And Garg was part of the brave new world.
A disruptive force in fashion, Garg was soon followed by others, such as Anavila Sidhu Mishra, who says she wore her first sari on Diwali when she was in Class IX-and felt that she had been transformed from a tomboy into a lady. Born and brought up in Karnal, Haryana, Mishra completed her graduation from the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi in 2000, with a specialisation in knitwear design. She was working in the corporate sector when she was asked by the ministry of rural development to undertake a three-year project with NIFT in Madhya Pradesh. "This was in 2004. I was dealing with real human beings. It changed my perception on sustaining them. I couldn't move back to the corporate world after that," she says. That was when she ventured into making saris. Her story echoes the story of how the sari is becoming a part of the modern women's wardrobe.
"The sari was never so important to me. I was always dressed in trousers and shirts. I looked at women who did everything in a sari. I was no longer an outsider and I tried to be accepted by them and started wearing saris," she says.
Before her first show at the 2014 Lakme Fashion Week, she spent two nights draping 30 saris for the show. "Young women today don't want to wear a sari. It is up to us designers to make it look beautiful. For me, it has to pass my test of me wanting to wear it," she says.
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Sari: 21st century designs
