BackAneeth Arora | Making of the price tag
Crafts-based luxury is about value, not cost
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Recently I was invited to a friend’s birthday party, where she wore an outfit from my label péro and proudly introduced me to her female friends. They were all praise for the textiles and the little buttons we use and the dozens of details that go into making a péro garment. Every compliment, however, ended with “péro has become luxury; it’s become too expensive now…"
This, of course, was not the only time I have heard similar comments about my designs. After five years of communicating our work philosophy through brand-building, it is a little disheartening to know that people who appreciate péro for its finesse and craftsmanship say they can no longer afford it. Especially now, when the attention to detail and the refinement of the textiles that we use has increased tenfold—not to mention inflation, the hike in prices of raw material, and the salaries allocated for skilled labour. All these concerns and people’s comments on pricing have compelled me to think about luxury and what it really means in crafts-based Indian fashion.
Turning that same question inward, I am reminded of two Chikankari silk kurtas from Lucknow made to measure for my father. They were completely hand-stitched and embroidered with the finest motifs, with his initials on the placket. When I asked him about the fabric, he said he had to wait three months for the silk to arrive from Varanasi. Those kurtas have a story and every time I see them (I have proudly inherited these), the story gets retold. This sense of a personal collection is “luxury" for me.
This sense was also my starting point for the development of the first collection I showcased in 2009 as a GenNext designer at the Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai. Every piece was handwoven, natural-dyed, hand-stitched and made by craftspeople from Jaipur who stitched clothing for the royal family. To my surprise, my audience did not understand the luxury I was offering them. Instead, they found it too expensive because they missed the surface embellishment they associated with luxury in Indian fashion.
That experience tugged at my heart the same way the recent comments did at the birthday party.
The only reason why péro still offers the same interpretation of luxury through clothes is because well-known designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee, the mentor for that GenNext show, had told me, “Reduce the hand-work a little if it helps you bring down the cost, but stick to your guns. I see these clothes selling like hot cakes one day."
There are two kinds of luxury consumers. Those who don’t mind if everyone is carrying the same bag as long as it is by a big and famous brand name, and those who do not want to be part of any cult. The latter is an old-school luxury consumer, always on the lookout for something personal and unique, something with a story. It is for this consumer that our craftspeople weave fine mul Jamdani, only 3m of which can be woven in a week, or print Ajrakh. As the name signifies, “aaj rakh", which means “keep it today", has to be kept for a day after every process; the total number of processes involved is 13. We do Bandhani, where 1m has almost 10,000 dots that have to be hand-tied before dyeing; Ikats, where each yarn has to be marked to get the perfect resist patterns, and one width of fabric has thousands and thousands of yarns.
This is only about base fabrics; each garment also has to be stitched with the smallest stitch, each seam hand-hemmed on either side, buttonholes made as painstakingly as embroidery. And while all this is happening, someone in Rajasthan is making those brass buttons by beating drops of molten brass and embossing péro manually on each one of them.
Let me not leave out the women who are involved in hand-embroidering the péro label on each garment. The heart that hangs with our tags is made from finely chopped material from the previous season’s waste textiles. All this is packaged in a hand-stamped muslin bag and put on sale.
Unfortunately, while discussing the making of a product, the effort of the craftspeople is accounted for to some extent, but most consumers overlook the research, experimentation and design inputs that go into combining those Jamdanis, Ikats and Ajrakhs into one piece of clothing. The technical inputs to refine textiles, the trial and error that goes into making coarse Kutchi wool as soft as pashmina, or developing fast-coloured textiles, are all a part of the countless processes that go into the making of the price tag.
Luxury is research and experimentation, the chance to experience new routes, to find new, unpredictable and unseen solutions. A product is luxe when it is handmade, tailored for a few, by involved people. Luxury is something that makes the consumer feel special. It may just be an heirloom piece. It can be a feeling of pride in flaunting a handmade brass button on a handmade shirt, in this age of mass production. Luxury is service, it’s being able to send back your five-year piece for repair and getting it back as good as new.
So the next time you find a garment from any label that attracts you expensive, ponder over the processes it has gone through; the people who have contributed to it. See if you can find a story in those details. Then maybe your mind will not insistently ask for a justification—for your heart would already have convinced you about its luxury.
The writer is a textile and dress maker and founder of the label péro
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