“Today, I am wearing a hand-painted Murshidabad silk in my favourite blue,” reads a post by Jaishree C. Iyer, an IT employee, below her selfie. Scroll down, and you find Devika Ramarathnam, owner of a clothing store in Bangalore, dressed in a revived Koorainadu pattu. The five-month-old Facebook group Women Weave World (424 members) buzzes with who-is-wearing-what posts throughout the day, with women from across the world sharing details about their drapes. The comments sometimes run long with information about the sari’s price, texture, history, the place it was bought from and personal memories attached to it.
W3, as the forum is also called, is not the sole one. In the last one year alone, several groups such as India Sari Challenge (around 4,000 members), Do 100 Sari Pact (over 9,000 members), Choliholick (consists of 600-plus blouse and sari enthusiasts), Kai Thari (over 3,800 handloom enthusiasts) mushroomed on Facebook across India, in addition to the older ones such as For The Love of Sari (over 5,000 members). The motive? To discuss and de-construct the weaves, which otherwise, were taken for granted or reserved in the deep recesses of their wardrobes until they surfaced occasionally.
Though textile connoisseurs like Rta Kapur Chisti and Gitanjali Shah Mandawa, among others, have been part of the sari revolution, for a few years now, what led to a resurgence in interest was a campaign that started on March 1, 2015. Two Bangalore-based entrepreneurs — Ally Matthan and Anju Kadam — promised each other that they would wear 100 saris by the end of the year, and announced the same to the world through a hashtag called ‘100sareepact’: “This is just for the love of wearing saris; there’s no agenda whatsoever,” says Ally.
But soon, thousands of women joined the pact and conversations veered from mere appreciative comments to curiosity-driven questions. “The textile bit came in later, and that was the bonus,” says Ally, who, thanks to the pact, is now on a mission to cover the four places in the world that make double ikat textiles — Bali in Indonesia, Okinawa Island in Japan, Pochampalli in Telangana and Patan in Gujarat. “Since last year, I have been travelling around the world just to experience textiles. There is just so much history, culture, design and art involved in it! Recently, a U.S.-based sari collector, my friend through the #100sareepact, bought me a Guatemalan ikat. Did you know that South America has an ikat weaving tradition as well?”
Call it peer impact, but slowly, enthusiasts like Ally have turned experts. The groups, which started off simply as a platform for sharing a common interest, built a tight-knit network of women, who were equally curious about the latest designer wear and grandmothers’ checked saris. “Every post teaches me something. I might see a sari someone has worn, and go back and read up about it in books and on the Internet. I never knew about the Kotpad weave (vegetable-dyed fabric woven by the tribal weavers of Koraput, Odisha) until a few months ago,” says Sreemathy Mohan, co-founder of the group W3, organiser of the T. Nagar sari trail during Madras Week last year, and an IT professional. The group is just an extension of her interest in saris that began with seeing her grandmother wear grand pattu saris in Coimbatore, followed by long shopping trips to Erode with her sisters and, later, acquiring a vintage Thirubhuvanam pattu sari (made by a cluster of weavers in Thanjavur district) from her mother. Now, she has one from many places in Tamil Nadu, including Paramakudi, Woraiyur, Chinnalapatti, Kancheepuram, Madurai, Tiruchi, Salem, Aruppukkottai and Vadambacheri, known for their own unique weave.
With each person posting little snippets of what they learnt for the day, online communities are morphing into crowd-sourced interactive sari encyclopaedias. Sign in, and you get to know all about where the best dry cleaners in the city are, how to get in touch with handloom weavers, textile museums around India, and dates of exhibitions by the Craft Council of India, Co-optex, Dastkar, and other communities that are otherwise known only to a niche crowd. “There are printmakers in Kalakshetra that hardly anyone knows about. I got a Kalamkari blouse for just Rs. 750. The process involved him sketching the design in pencil, applying alum, dyeing the cloth in Myrobalan, and dyeing it again for the red colour. Most of them are not aware of the skills involved,” Sreemathy says. Similarly, she got a Khadi silk sari, done by Gajam Anjaiah, a master handloom designer and Padma Shri awardee (2013), in Hyderabad, for just Rs. 5,500. The market value would otherwise be around Rs. 30,000. “The key is to be aware of these skills that are accessible to all.”
Through discussions, the interest in knowing the undervalued craftsmen took priority. Soon, women started forming groups and visiting the settlements of the handloom weavers. So much so that travel ventures such as Breakaway and Chennai Magic are seeing an increase in the number of those registering for textile visits to Kancheepuram, Puducherry and so on. Last year, the trails explored T. Nagar and Mylapore in Chennai, and Puttapaka (a place famous for ikat weavers) in Andhra Pradesh.
A few took off on their own. Like Jaishri Iyer, co-founder of W3, who visited the Jakkampatti weavers in Theni and Madurai, and Toda women who embroider in the Nilgiris. “I shared stories about them and showed their works on the group. Soon, everybody wanted a Toda shawl. So, I connected them with the NGO that works with the tribals,” she says.
Sometimes, talks replaced trails. More enthusiasts started filing into Apparao Galleries to attend their monthly Yarn Club talks (in Chennai and Delhi), besides those by Co-optex and Kalakshetra. Sharan Apparao, who started the Yarn Club in 2012 to revive an interest in textile heritage, notes an increase in the participation of young girls and students. The lectures engage discussions on a plethora of topics ranging from organic cotton to vintage textiles, and expose some of the extinct weaves like Kodali Karuppur (a village in Ariyalur district). As it turns out, there are many weaves that have almost become extinct, with maybe one or two weavers practising it currently. “The concern is that there are no written records of how they are done. For example, the famous M.S. Blue sari created by Nalli has a mix of seven blue shades, but there is no documentation,” says Sreemathy. Probably, simple selfie posts are a good start.
