Trend Tracker | Fashion’s homeland

With the release of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film Goliyon ki Rasleela Ram-Leela on Friday, Ranveer Singh’s much-marketed kediya, worn as a sexy open jacket with jeans, and Deepika Padukone’s embroidered and sensuously designed ghaghra-choli finally burst to cinematic life. Though designer Anju Modi, who has created Padukone’s clothes for the film, emphasizes that the credit for the extreme attention to detail goes to Bhansali, she says she went on a research trip to Kutch, Gujarat, from where she sourced rare embroideries, then patched the tukdas (pieces) on rustic textiles to create whole outfits. Rejoicing quietly on the other hand, and far removed from the film’s fanfare, is Abdul Jabbar Khatri, a bandhini artisan from Bhuj. Khatri’s applause is for the ever-growing popularity of Kutch in Indian fashion and films.

Modi, Mishra and Khatri are all foot soldiers of a larger movement. Earlier if Kutch came and went as a seasonal fad, today designers want to rediscover it as a vast design template. We may gloat about the influence of Kutchi shibori on Japanese fashion, about designers like John Galliano and Alexander McQueen finding inspiration in the voluminous and embellished garments of rural tribes or the Hermès family of Paris spending long weeks in the region riveted by its rural crafts, but it is actually Indian designers who have taken Kutchi design to another level. Designers like Tarun Tahiliani, Abraham & Thakore, Manish Malhotra, Mishra, Modi, Aneeth Arora, Tanvi Kedia, Payal Pratap (even that would be a conservative list) have found in Kutch a design vocabulary that is starkly Indian yet globally attractive.

“No other region in India has this kind of diverse concentration of technique, embroidery and silhouette,” says Mishra.

Then there is Payal Pratap whose debut collection last year, called Gates of Dawn, didn’t just use the Kutchi nomadic shapes but was vibrant with geometric and graphic cross stitch embroideries interpreted for contemporary mindsets. “Even my craft documentation project in college all those years back was on Kutch,” says Pratap. “It’s a region where so many colours are mixed in harmony, where naïve embroideries are used in unusual ways, on yokes, hems and necklines, in trims, home furnishings, toran hangings, cushions,” she adds. Pratap’s corseted tops with choli cups, embroidered gilets and scooped tops were her way of rendering contemporary sensuality to traditional shapes. For her recent collection shown last month, once gain Pratap sent out salwar-pants, sleeveless gilets and layered skirts in chintz prints and framework portrait embroideries.

“Indian crafts are going through an interesting phase and Kutch is the hotbed of reinvention because of the quality, capability and design flexibility of artisans who do not stubbornly cling to their traditional designs, even creating new patterns without mentoring by designers,” says Mishra, whose various Kutch collections have required diligent attention to process. Other designers agree that artisans understand the present-day clamour for vegetable dyes, for instance, and provide authentic stuff instead of taking shortcuts for quick commerce.

In the recent book Shifting Sands—Kutch: Textiles, Traditions, Transformation by Archana Shah, who has been working in the region since 1976, there is a quote from a seafarer called Shivji Budha. “Designing a wooden dhow is a combination of suujh and hisaab—wisdom and calculation,” he says. These two standpoints could well be the formula for the collaborative practice of designers and craftspersons keen on crowning Kutch as Indian fashion’s homeland.