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A winner in warp and weft

Shweta Asher, from Mattancherry, has won laurels for her work in textile designing

TEXTILE TALES Shweta 's designs on textiles have won her laurels

Young Kochi girl, Shweta Pravin Asher ventured into the challenging and competitive world of textile designing, in Mumbai, as a student and succeeded. She is a first rank holder in printing and dyeing, from Maharashtra, was awarded the Mafatlal Fabrics Rotating Trophy for the best campaign for the year 2001 - 2002, the Hansa Rotating Shield from the Amritsar Swadeshi Woollen Mills for the best woven exhibit in the year 2000 - 2001 and merit certificates in college and State art exhibitions for print making and fabric tie-and-dye.

Possessing a creative bent of mind, Shweta was looking for a course that would "utilise and challenge my talents, abilities and drive" and textile designing seemed to be an attractive and apt field.

Textile designing is concerned with, "understanding and creating one of the most intimate and yet public aspects of the material world," she says as it involves both surface and structural design. The designer is concerned with, "textile or embroidery designs, prints, wears, styles and textures". Shweta is into creating textile designs that are inspired in colour, motif and design by a chosen theme. For instance for her award winning entry she chose to work on Moroccan themes based on motifs found on the pottery and jewellery of Morocco. Commenting on a small fabric design that she is working on at present, she explains that it is inspired by typical Indian motifs, but adds that one does not just lift a motif. The exclusive design comes when you "alter" or "vary" an existing motif according to the needs of the concept.

She creates the concept, prints, paints and embroiders the material herself and the fabric being suitable for decoration, furnishing, and dress materials. Shweta's favourite fabric is silk. It is exclusive and colours look very bright on it. Working on intricate design is her forte, she feels.

Presently Shweta prefers to work for an exclusive clientele rather than take up a job at a mill or a factory. The latter, she thinks, has its limitation because there, one is designing for mass production, while with an individual client one can be as creative as one likes.

Asked if she thinks that she could carve a niche for herself in Kochi, she replies that exclusively designed fabrics come at a price and in Mumbai there is a good demand. She wonders if Kochi has an upmarket demand. Of course her views are based on her experiences in Kochi when she was in school here.

Her work on textiles has led her to take up two related hobbies with some seriousness. She paints (often on textiles) using themes from Indian mythology based on techniques displayed in `pat-chitras'.

She is also into jewellery designing for local and foreign markets. Acquiring hands on experience she feels gives more exposure than to go for an academic course. International tastes are different from those in India and in the U.S. especially people prefer to invest in diamonds rather than in gold. There is a demand in US for what is known as three stone jewellery, which is supposed to represent the past, present and future. Then special occasion jewellery for Mother's Day, or X'mas and so on is also a hot trend. "There are also", says Shweta, "a variety of rings for various occasions like wedding bands, right hand rings and hand rings. Besides setting preferences are different." Shweta likes to work on asymmetrical compositions in jewellery design.

Her plans for the future? "Oh, I am into textiles still", she says. "I can do textile designing work at home. Jewellery is at the moment an extended hobby."

But whatever she does, her interests surely draw sustenance from each other, bound together by the word design.

Interdependent

Textile designing is not identical to fashion designing though both are increasingly interdependent. Both the textile and the fashion designer often work in-tandem but the textile designer creates "unique fabrics" while the fashion designer is into the creation of clothing (tailoring, draping, pattern-making and construction) as well as the creation of accessories. "Fashion designers understand that the future of their area lies to a great extent in the selection of fabrics," says Shweta and they collaborate with textile designers.

PRATIMA ASHER

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