Caroline Poiner, founder of the Sydney-based social enterprise, Artisans of Fashion, tells us how she brought Indian artisans and Australian designers together for a special project. She is curating the group fashion show organized by the Australian High Commission in India and the Ministry of Textiles, Government of India, at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in the city today, for Lotus Make-Up India Fashion Week. She sourced the fabrics and all the designers took it from there. The Australian designers will present their own unique style and re-interpret traditional weaving techniques.
“You will see a vast contrast in each of the designer’s styles, from Cassandra Harper, who has embraced quintessential soft-edged patterns in contemporary silk-cotton ikat weaves from Telangana in her resort collection with classic, feminine lines, to the more whimsical, storytelling that Luke Sales and Anna Plunkett of Romance Was Born are renowned for,” says Poiner. She acted as a bridge between all participating Australian designers and Indian artisans by supplying them handcrafted textiles from Banaras and other cities and working closely with artisans at grassroots.
Interestingly, she also worked with Roopa Pemmaraju, an Australian Indian designer of ethical luxury brand Roopa, whose work is an eclectic mix of Indian textiles and Australian indigenous art. She is paying homage to the ancient network of trade routes that once connected the East with the West and has drawn inspiration from the historical Indian and Afghan textiles. She will showcase gowns, billowing pants and floor-length silk skirts. Similarly, richness of handloom inspired participant Brothers Earth and Naushad Ali to collaborate on the men’s capsule. This show of Australian design and Indian handloom is an outcome of MoU signed between the two countries at ‘Textiles India 2017’ in Gandhinagar. \
Model wearing an outfit created by Roopa Pemmaraju
Excerpts from an interview:
What would you say the crux of the show is?
This is an exciting opportunity to showcase the stunning artisanal textiles back in their place of origin, with a contemporary Australian aesthetic. The show is a representation of the possibilities for Western designers wanting to work with traditional artisan techniques.
This is just a small sample when it comes to the variety of artisan skills that can be found across India; however it is a positive step forward and hopefully, it will provide inspiration for many more designers in the future. In the search for unique and bespoke, India’s textile artisans provide designers with rich and diverse possibilities; likewise, our designers can showcase these incredible techniques to the rest of the world.
What part of Australia does it showcase?
Australia has a diverse and multicultural population with a thriving design culture that is reflected in our fashion industry and designer’s collections. Each of the designers showcasing their collections this week has a passion for textiles and craftsmanship which is what drew them to working with the artisans in India. Our aim is to help provide access to as many craft techniques as possible and facilitate collaborations through our connections that we have been nurturing over the past eight years.
How did the designers use very traditional material?
Two of our designer labels, We Are Kindred and Romance Was Born have worked with the rich and highly decorative silk brocades and jacquards from our weavers in Varanasi. The stunning Gyasar brocades traditionally woven for the Tibetan Buddhists have been used in totally different ways.
We Are Kindred worked with the traditional motifs and designs and then selected a soft tonal colour palette which completely transformed the textiles to sit with their ultra feminine, luxurious collections.
With Luke & Anna’s design aesthetic is more is more. They don’t tend to follow any trends of colours or limit themselves in that way. This is evident in their whimsical, rainbow collection that will be seen on the runway. What they love about the brocades is the richness in pattern and colours, so they wanted to make them feel much richer by using a variety of different brocades altogether all at once by appliqué and patch working techniques.
Roopa’s collection is inspired by the Silk Road where she has embraced both the hand-woven techniques in gorgeous silk jacquards from West Bengal, highly decorative prints, along with the heavy embellishment of beaded embroideries.
Comment on designers’ and brands’ core values in terms of being ethical, organic or any other philosophy related to fashion
All of the brands are philosophically aligned with ethical practice and support craftsmanship and the principles of slow fashion at the core of their brand values.
With the global fashion industry responsible for the social and environmental implications associated with fast production cycles, overuse of resources, waste generation, environmental pollution and unethical labour conditions, handloom and hand-crafted textiles offer designers and brands the opportunity to offset some of this folly. I truly believe that handloom should be sitting high up on the sustainability platform for designers and brands to make a significant impact.
