THE fashion firmament suddenly finds itself comfortable wearing an Indian face. Craftsmen and rural women are also enjoying their tentative forays on to the ramp despite the incongruity of mismatched cultures. Even as they do not imagine themselves as models, they are happy sharing the pride of displaying Indian workmanship and striding up to take a bow along with well-known designers who have used their skills. Buyers from abroad nod approvingly at sequins, tie-dye, kantha and block prints, and, our Page Three designers no longer think we are irritating loonies for having pointed them towards Indian craft skills all these years.

This has happened almost 30 years after Gurjari (a Government of Gujarat handicraft shop) first offered a modern application of traditional craft skills by using mirror work, appliqué and bandhni on prêt lines although they were simply called ‘ready made’ clothes in those pre-globalized, unsophisticated days. They became a rage among college students, activists and even the moderately fashion conscious set that existed before Fashion with a capital F took over. Gurjari also offered exquisite gajji silk abhas preferred by the likes of the late Smita Patil. Teji Bachchan bought the expensive silk saris and Shabana Azmi the cotton ones designed by me under the light of kerosene lanterns and block printed at Dhamadka, a tiny village in Kutch that had no electricity in those days.

At that time such fashions were classified as ‘ethnic’ – a hateful word that according to its dictionary meaning implied that traditional skills and Indian dresses like saris and kurtas were for the ‘natives’, while the rest were for the cosmopolitan rulers. However, the Gurjari style caught on and became wildly popular, giving the concept of Indian fashion its first tentative outing. This would never have happened without the rich craft skills that were latent in the hands of our rural people. They were then in danger of going under with the first flush of synthetics that hit the market almost at the same time.

 

Twenty five years after the National Institute of Fashion Technology was set up, followed by globalization becoming the catchword and threatening to swallow anything indigenous and traditional, the fashion set now feels confident of coming out of its West driven mindset. Designers like Manish Arora revel in using kitch images of Indian gods and goddesses. Others are experimenting with fine khadi, tussar silks and ikats. Fine hand embroideries confidently embellish sleeves and yokes, and, having begun the trend by swamping brides with extravagantly encrusted zari skirts, tops and veils, doyenne of Indian design Ritu Kumar’s youthful summer dresses now lightly and lyrically display subtle Indian shades like light indigo, pale terracotta and ochre in hand block prints. Our fashion designers realize that India’s skills and design heritage have a lot to offer that will make Indian design special and unique internationally. They are also slowly getting the message from aspiring new generations that ‘wearability’ is the key word in presenting fashion to the upwardly mobile Indian customer, who is put off by the unwearable and culturally obtuse stuff they see being paraded on the ramps.

 

We may cheer this ‘Indian-ness’ that finally feels confident enough to show through. But most thick, glossy society and fashion magazines with pages of the partying rich set hardly show anyone wearing a sari. Let alone the fabulous Sambalpuris ikats and shimmering Kanjivarams, even the sequin covered chiffons are now giving way to tight fitting backless dresses, often exposing the knobbly knees and slightly rounded stomachs of our Indian women.

The pathetic attitude of our policymakers who love to rub shoulders with the fashion fraternity was recently displayed when a flying school announced that tribal girls do not look attractive as airhostesses. Tellingly, a photograph accompanying this story in a national newspaper showed a group of statuesque tribal women wearing beautifully draped saris in the traditional way, some without blouses and some worn short to help them walk unhindered in the forest near a village. They were gazing at their ‘trained’ and ‘polished’ tribal sister, fresh out of school for airhostesses. The girl looked pathetic in a tight skirt, a collared shirt, high heels and, of course, those knobbly knees. Why do we create policies that declare our own ‘native’ indigenous people misfits by expecting them to transform into another species overnight like Cinderella?

A few years ago the head of Air India announced that Pierre Cardin was to be invited to design uniforms for our airhostesses. I wrote a stern letter to him, asking what was wrong with our Indian designers, or traditionally woven exquisite saris, with a vast treasure of available designs, motifs and colours, and why a rather elderly Frenchman was needed to perk up our uniforms. I was grateful to receive an embarrassed and conciliatory reply that did not say much, but the Pierre Cardin outfits were not paraded after that.

The partying elite and most of their friends in the fashion fraternity work from an assumption that women in India (a) do not wear saris any more; (b) saris are not comfortable for working women; and that (c) most Indian women are dying to wear western-style dresses. To a large extent all these are fallacies. There is enough evidence to show that beyond the metropolises, particularly in small towns and positively in rural areas, Indian women hardly pay any attention to fashion and continue to wear their traditional regional mode of clothing on all occasions. At most, the sari wearers may have graduated to salwar kurtas and young girls from salwar kurtas to pants.

 

The second proposition is highly elitist. Women in the fields and factories across the country wear saris, and in Mumbai, which probably has the most number of urban working women, they still largely wear saris and salwar kurtas and not dresses to work, even while travelling by train or bus. So when people speak loosely of ‘everyone’ they actually mean those who populate their rather narrow world.

As for the third assumption: of course, all young girls in their early teens love to experiment with miniskirts and midriff-showing tops, but in our time and at that age, the T-shirt and blue jeans worn by someone coming from abroad was the equivalent. With age, and the timelessness of Indian cultural practices and values, older women continue to find comfort in traditional Indian dress – and why not? Just like water is the real competitor of Coke and Pepsi, the elegant and timeless sari is the real competition for western-oriented fashion designers.

 

The basic need while linking fashion to Indian crafts is to understand the right mix of tradition and modernity. It works best when the latter is wholly contemporary and innovative, while the fabric or embellishments are the very best of traditional replications. To marry the two, the craftsperson and the contemporary designer must connect at a creative and egalitarian level. In the role of the irritating loony I was, some years ago, pitted against two well-known and charming fashion designers, Rina Dhaka and Rohit Bal, on a popular television programme called The Big Fight. The subject covered fashion, its relevance, crafts and craftspersons.

Without meaning to sound unduly sentimental, I asked why a bikini fashioned out of a quarter metre of cloth cost more than a handwoven sari length of five metres that had probably taken the weaver a month to prepare. Khadi’s comfort and adaptability to summer and winter fashions had not been explored since it was still viewed as the camouflage of a politician. Audience support for the traditional, the craftsperson, wearability and the high cost of supposedly ‘high fashion’, and follow-up mail demanding repeat showings of the programme, was, however, surprising and gratifying. It was the only show for which I received fan mail. But far more gratifying was the alacrity with which many designers turned to places like Dilli Haat to source handmade textiles and connect directly with their producers.

It would only be fair to give credit to some progressive and dedicated NGOs who actually paved the way for craft skills to be upgraded, fine-tuned, polished and presented at fora where fashion designers could appreciate their potential. With development as their goal, the empowerment of the artisan as their commitment, and with resilience and grit to reach far flung areas, enlightened people within NGOs, assisted by talented designers who looked for social causes to which to apply their talents, made a real difference which the fashion community would surely recognize.

 

A careful line has to be maintained by NGOs who need funding or means of remaining self-reliant, between earnings and development work in the creative sector. Today, there are occasions when designers turned entrepreneurs compete in the same event as craftsperson entrepreneurs. While it may instill a spirit of competitiveness that benefits the craftsperson, it does give a somewhat unfair advantage to the designer who has worked upon the skill of the craftsperson but added ‘design’ to it.

These days, NGOs are caught between having to provide flair, packaging and gimmickry to sell the wares of craftspersons to whom they provide development and marketing services, while being restricted to non-profit methods to do so. They have to largely satisfy themselves that the benefits of their design and development work are reaped by entrepreneurs and fashion designers with their own labels.

A small experiment in trying to juggle all these aspects and still keep up with ‘market’ expectations is on at the tiny top floor shop in Khan Market called Dastkari Haat. It is run by the owner with the interior décor, craft and textile product design provided by the Dastkari Haat Samiti, which acts as a custodian of the goods which are produced under its direction by its craftsperson members on consignment. There is a brand label associated with the name of the shop, but the individual identity of the craft, the human element in production and the service rather than profit orientation of the stakeholders are also up front, making it an interesting fair trade practice within a contemporary design setting.

 

In earlier days, western designers attached to major wholesale and retail outfits abroad would work exclusively with garment manufacturers to source crafts and embellishments available in India. Designs were, and still are, created on foreign drawing boards and sent to India in great secrecy to be manufactured. No one in India would see them, and the factories are sometimes part of a chain of medium sized sweatshops. Today, fashion shows, and even the media, take pride in highlighting embroidered, block printed and handwoven textures and Indians are happy to see Indianness being given a different style. Stricter international labour standards now require closer monitoring and some socially conscious companies insist on fair practices before importing apparel and artifacts to their countries.

Despite all these improvements in the fashion industry, fashion itself is defined by the need to change. If the Indian look is ‘in’ this season, it has to change to something else (China, Mexico, Japan, South Africa?) the next season in order to remain fashionable. This does not help instill a sense of security or stability for those labouring in garment factories or artisans handcrafting in rural areas. Many such people have been left by the wayside when an export order falls through.

The true challenge for the Indian fashion designer will be to discover the myriad craft skills India possesses and selectively use and transform them into new ‘fashions’ every time. Chinoiserie is being revived in Gujarat; Kantha has immense graphic possibilities; hand-painted, screen-printed and digital replications of folk art from Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal have just been touched upon lightly so far. Regional Indian scripts could provide a fabulous design vocabulary. New embroideries are surfacing in unheard of places in Tamil Nadu, and stinging nettle is being transformed into elegant stoles and scarves in the villages of Uttaranchal. Not only is our heritage immense but our potential to create and recreate is even more mind-boggling. With our rural areas crying for employment, it is obvious where a true Indian must go.

 

An interesting facet of handwork coming to play a larger role in fashion design and the creation of lifestyle accessories (seemingly a more fashionable word than just calling them crafts), is the financial support given by government to designers individually and to NGOs to conduct projects in design development with craftspeople. While the purpose has been to expand the range of items for export, in tune with the mantra of export/ globalization, the Indian customer has become more ‘lifestyle’ conscious and demands these items in India as well.

Upmarket stores like The Home Store, Bombay Store, Bungalow 8, Moonriver, Apartment Nine or Good Earth offer many high quality home products created by Indian designers who have worked closely with craftspeople to apply excellence of skill with a new material or format. Both have an opportunity to experiment and explore their own range of capabilities till they reach a point of creative unity and satisfaction. Niche or boutique marketing, limited editions associated with a particular brand like Shades of India, all enable the craftsperson to get out of a sweatshop situation and become an equal partner in any creative venture, demanding more time to create a fine piece, and demanding a fair price for his or her skill.

In fact, Indian designers are at a significant milestone where they can confidently turn old working adages upside down to dictate terms worldwide. The craft and fashion fraternity together can stand up and declare the following: standardization is out, variety is in, natural fibres and eco friendly fabrics are in, slithery synthetic imitations from China are out Indian natural dyes produce an exotic colour palette that cannot be replicated in the next lot, so pay more for this and be exclusive, celebrate the craft embellishment and the handmade textile to celebrate India’s heritage. These can serve as inspirational messages that encourage weavers and artisans in their journey towards modernity and a new spirit of self-confidence that will strengthen the quality of their output.

 

Many designers who go to work with crafts communities which are funded through government grants often find that the products they have created get an enthusiastic response. It motivates them to start a brand, an enterprise, in their own name to market these products. They have a choice between using the artisans as ‘labour’, unseen, faceless and perhaps even exploited or, as responsible citizens they can pay them a fair wage or even make them shareholders in the enterprise. In such cases the designer should remember that he or she is already at an advantage, having had the development work paid for, and having found a ready pool of resource for production.

The artisans have been upgraded and trained by the designer, but again, at no financial cost. The profits that come out of such efforts should be distributed equitably between artisan producer and designer/seller. Unfortunately, when an attractive brand name is given to the product, it is almost always associated with the designer and not the artisan. However, for those who believe in the ‘trickle down theory’, some improvement in the status of the artisan is better than nothing.

 

India is still a country full of vast imbalances. A fashion event takes up huge areas of media space without the back-up required of a well established industry. Girls believe the ultimate goal is no longer marriage but to become fashion models. Yet, craftspeople earn less in a month than one fashionista spends in an evening. Fashion means nothing at all to a majority of skilled craftspeople who embellish the textiles of today.

Nevertheless, looking back, there is a new bounce in the step of the craftsperson and a look of self-worth on his face. There is also a look of excitement and pride in the eyes of those designers who have tapped the hitherto unnoticed ocean of craft skills their country offers them and found that it makes all the difference. They need to constantly ask themselves, ‘Is it better to be a good designer competing with the international world of designers with the same sort of styling, fabric and silhouettes, or is there a special pride in being known as a great designer who offers the best of India to the world?’ Surely the double advantage is more than just serendipity.