∝I can’t get over the image of Ahmedabad-based dermatologist Dr. Rushika Gadani, wearing a bright yellow sari, with her baby strapped on her back in a modern-day baby harness (again handloom!), amidst the bustle of a street. One of the many thousands of images on social media of women embracing the humble-turned-fashionable handloom sari as effortless everyday wear.
Rushika started wearing handlooms since November last year because she wanted to, and had grown up seeing her mum wear them. Joining a sari-wearing pact gave her the drive and self-discipline to continue. "I was always attracted to handlooms. They carry a natural grace and beauty. And in a hot city like ours, light cottons are the best."
She admits that hand-woven clothes are expensive, and her wardrobe is not her priority. But you can still find handlooms you can easily afford, she stresses.
Since 2015, the sari has made people take a re-look at handlooms like never before, and has become synonymous with the idea of handloom. Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year declared August 7 as National Handloom Day, to mark the day the Swadeshi Movement was launched in 1905.
There has been recently a great curiosity among handloom wearers about what they have worn, bought. The maker of the sari, the weaver, his life and conditions came into focus. Many weavers’ cooperatives and companies started attaching little notes to the sari that told the buyer where their sari came from, how long it took to make, who the weaver of the sari is, with a photo of the weaver. People started to learn the names of the weaves, identifying them, went on guided walks and textile trails in Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, to weaving communities, bought directly from weavers.
Deepa Krishnan, Mumbai-based founder of Magic Tours of India wears only handlooms everyday. She observes how the world over people are ignoring their own rich textile traditions and opting for mass produced western wear.
"Earlier my wardrobe had other saris too. But as I started exploring the country and visiting weaving clusters for my tourism business, I became increasingly aware of the beauty of handlooms and the struggles of weavers. At the same time I also saw beautiful old textiles in museums. So I began wearing more and more handloom."
Many hash-tagged social media campaigns over the last year took the handloom love a few yards deeper -- #ilovehandlooms, #100sareepact #60handloomsaree and most recently, what Minister of Textiles Smriti Irani set off with the #IWearHandloom campaign. Laila Tyabji, chairperson of Dastkar, an NPO supporting the survival of India’s craft traditions is a regular sari wearer and with an intimate knowledge of the country’s weaving traditions. Tyabji believes that possibly because the sari shows off the full gamut of a weaver’s skill - with borders, body, and pallav all having a play of different colours and designs, blended into a perfect whole, it's become more associated with handlooms. "But we must also remember the multiple potential and uses of handloom - from furnishing materials to silk stoles, from the finest Pashmina shawls to bath towels!"
Young women, even the occasional college goers, have been fashionably sporting the sari, with sneakers, backless cholis, and backpack in tow to cafes, plays, and pubs and making their own style statement. And when movie stars wear handloom saris, on screen or off it, the desire to imitate the look is also strong -- whether it's Vidya Balan, Nandita Das, Konkona Sen, Shabana Azmi, Nayanthara, or Radhika Apte.
In the last month, Tyabji put up pictures everyday on facebook of herself in a sari, to show the world the kind of range of everyday cotton handloom saris the country has. “I don’t think people wear (or use) handloom because it is fashionable. Rather the reverse - you run the risk of being considered a ‘behenji’! Nor do they wear it as 'a cause', though recently it has become a threatened species and cause willy-nilly. They wear it because no other fabric has such a variety of motifs, weaving styles, textures and applications. I don’t like the word ‘elitist', but yes, wearing handloom is becoming expensive and therefore a bit of a niche market - affordable only to some,” she observes.
Ally Matthan, Bengaluru-based perfumer and one of three textile loving women who started The Registry of Sarees which hosts learning events and works toward revival of forgotten handlooms, says that “It is heartening to see that the handloom sari has her moment in the spotlight again. As cycles go, this is not the first time that the handloom sari is at the forefront of fashion. It is however the first time that the handloom sari is seeing a moment of magnificent design value. A lot of the credit goes to weavers and fashion designers who have made it a conscious choice to elevate the handloom sari beyond the mundane and ordinary in cities to a choice of dress from which style, history, personal stories, customization and even mood can be garnered."
