Designers are increasingly innovating with traditional Indian weaves to come up with unique fabrics of their own If design is the body,fabric is the soul, says Mumbai-based designer Krishna Mehta,citing the reason behind her travels to different parts of the country in search of new weaves for her collections. Trained to be a weaver herself,she does not hesitate to take the loom into her own hands if she needs to,even though she has a team of in-house weavers. Innovating with techniques and combining different weaves has been Mehtas forte. There is a lot that a designer can do by just using different kinds of fabric, says Mehta,who says she is a textile designer first. Her latest innovation is a special kind of silkwoven in Bihars Bhagalpur district. The thread comes from a local silk worm and since it is so delicate,it can only be made in a narrower width. The silk is wonderfully soft and light,which is the perfect fabric to use for garments to be worn when the mercury is soaring, says the designer. While Mehta travels to Bihar for her super-soft silk weaves,Hyderabad-based fashion designer Gaurang Shah has enhanced his 400-count fine pure cotton Kota with Mughal bootis. For his collection titled Gulbadan,which was also showcased at Lakme Fashion Week Summer-Resort 2013,Shah worked with a cluster of weavers in Kota for many months. When I get my own fabric woven,I can do anything I want. The finished product stands out as my USP. My only concern is that I have to get it woven in a large volume as a small quantity is not commercially viable, says Shah,who primarily designs saris and floor-skimming gowns. He uses different permutations of cotton and silk threads to create a variety of fabrics. Some of his saris come with a cotton body and a silk pallu another signature style of Shah to make the garments more comfortable to wear during the hot Indian summer. Jaipur-based designer Swati Vijaivargie realised the importance of creating her own fabrics while working in her family business of manufacturing rugs. Fabric is the foremost thing in fashion. When you buy a fabric from the market,anyone can copy your designs and make a final product just like yours. But when you manufacture your own fabric,it is almost impossible for someone to duplicate what you are doing, she reasons. Vijaivargie likes to work with different combinations of cotton and silk to come up with fabrics that are soft and drape well to suit the designs of her collection. She corrects a notion that silk can only be worn in winters. The designer treats cotton-silk with water dying and other methods of softening. It is very difficult to get the weavers to customise what you want if it is something new. They are so fixed with traditional ways of weaving that they are not open to experimentation, says the designer,adding,Though it has been a few years that I have been working and pushing them to weave my designs,they are now open to it. Once her fabrics are treated,Vijaivargie enhances them with Shibori,a Japanese form of tie-and-dye method of printing. I hire local artisans to do the Shibori printing for me as it is a very delicate craft and requires a lot of patience. I first show them the patterns I want. This season,I am working with checks made with Shibori and stripes made using leheriya, she says. For Delhi-based Gaurav Rai,designer at Raisons,getting fabrics woven with his designs is a personal choice that he made after hunting for rarity and finding only varieties of chiffons and georgettes. He first made a foray seven years ago and now has over 200 weavers who work in their native villages across the country. The latest summer collection,called Chidiya ki Kahani,is all about cotton and zari kota in dusty pastels and bright fluoroscents. The fabric is sheer,light and yet formal with real zari motifs ranging from birds to abstracts, says Rai,who has extended meetings with the weavers explaining them how to achieve the desired result.
