l When you spot kalamkari, ikats and double ikats or teliya rumal garments and saris at Lakme Fashion Week and the ongoing Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week, take a closer look. Some of the fabric may have been sourced from Gajam Govardhana's enterprise.
Among the designers who regularly source fabric from him are David Abraham and Rakesh Thakore (A& T), Neeru Kumar, Anju Modi, Vinita Pittie, Madhu Jain and Anand Kabra. Yards of black silk fabric with an occasional cycle motif (arrived at through the tie and dye ikat process) got converted into dainty tunics and skirts for the A&T label at the last edition of Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week. This time too, the designer duo picked up ikat saris from Govardhana.
l Ikat fabric from here gets exported to Spain, Italy, US and Japan. Apart from this, orders are placed from Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia to design ikat stoles with patterns akin to that of Malay, Thai and Indonesian batiks.
lThe teliya rumal process involves soaking the yarn in a concoction of ginger oil and castor ash and oil, sometimes even up to 21 days. The yarn retains the cooling properties of the oil and is then subjected to natural dyes and the tie and dye process of ikat.
