Ritu Kumar at 80: How she drew Indian fashion out of the colonial yoke by rescuing block prints and lost textiles

“Even now, no matter where I go, I pick up a garment made by locals,” says Kumar, who is archiving India’s textiles, building an online library and finishing her new book. She has even threaded her life into tradition as evidenced by the block-printed panels lining her walls. Having just returned to the ramp with the Fashion Design Council of India’s (FDCI) couture show last month, Kumar showed how artisanal traditions could be effortless and relevant for the Gen Z woman with sharply tailored separates, corseted jackets paired with delicate sheers and vintage florals on flowing silks and velvet scarves.

“Did you know that the printed silk scarves I began with in the 60s became a cult fashion statement in the West?”, asks Kumar, who had stores in Paris, London and New York in the late 80s and 90s, much before globalisation and the retail boom came to Indian shores. She even dressed royalty like Princess Diana. Later, she may have shifted most of her international business online and to collaborative showcases but her annual turnover at the time ran into crores, the highest for any Indian fashion outlet.

THE CALLING AND THE BIG FIND

An art history major from Briarcliff College in New York, Kumar moved to Kolkata where her husband Shashi was based and took up museology at the Ashutosh Museum of Indian Art. “I was fascinated by how Western art had been preserved. But back then, none of India’s rich repository of sculpture, painting, crafts and textiles was documented. Besides, the colonialists took away every collectible with them. So I started researching Indian art heritage,” she says.
She would take the tram to College Street, climb the old, dilapidated building and never miss a class. “The faculty was brilliant and we were just three students in a class. I got an opportunity to study the dig site of Chandraketugarh, an ancient port city near Kolkata.

Kumar’s latest couture collection which was launched at the FDCI Couture Week in Delhi

Archaeological evidence suggests it was a thriving trading centre with connections to the Mauryan and Gupta empires. Excavations unearthed terracotta artefacts, Roman coins, remains of Greek ships and fine pottery. Villagers would find terracotta figurines and bead necklaces far away from the dig; I still have some of them. I would go there in an Ambassador car, work through the day and come back at night. There was me attending races over the weekend and rushing back to the dig on Mondays,” recalls Kumar, now 80. In between excavations, she would explore nearby areas. That’s how she chanced upon charred wooden blocks carved with intricate designs. That led her to Serampore, which was the block printing hub of Bengal in the 1800s.

“We had an indigenous block printing industry which had been wiped out by colonialists so that they could sell their cheap Lancashire-printed cotton textiles. The wood carvers of Serampore burnt their blocks after losing their livelihood. The British had killed the memory of Indian designs, leaving us with no references. My blood boiled and I found my calling.

I would revive the textiles and crafts of India, beginning with Bengal,” says Kumar. She set up her first design unit in Serampore in the 60s — an old British fish godown with high ceiling — with some tables and all the hand-block printing and the Murshidabad silk she could lay her hands on. She would hop house to house to find artisans who remembered a design. “There was just endless waiting on charpoys under a tree and having cups of chai and conversations in the heat, but I had to find the keepers of legacy,” she adds.

The Ritu Kumar story began under the trees — the fabric was washed in the Ganga and sun-dried, the vegetable dyes were mixed and the sheesham wood was chiselled up. She also had her sweet revenge for all the cultural appropriation that had happened till then. “The British would import fabric from India, mimic Indian designs, print them in Lancashire and then sell it back to us. They did the same with chintz, block-printed or hand-painted textiles that were wax-polished. These became very popular in 17th and 18th century Europe but then the mill-made imitations took over.

Since it was the mid-60s, the age of flower power and The Beatles, we exported printed dresses, silk scarves and bags to Paris. They became hugely popular,” says Kumar. So much so that everybody began copying them. She recalls meeting a garment exporter from Surat on a flight from Varanasi to Delhi, who sold fake Ritu Kumar merchandise. “He asked me who Ritu Kumar was. We were a baby enterprise but somebody had seen potential in our designs and had decided to copy them. Just because we did not learn to value our handwriting, fakes seemed to be an acceptable idea,” says Kumar. Copying became so prevalent that units in Surat began producing 2,000 saris a day. Varanasi and Ahmedabad followed suit as unit after unit came up.

Of course, there was a silver lining. From printing polka dots and stripes, Kumar slowly observed Indian designs creep into fabric borders and house linen. There was a subtle assertion of Indian identity. That’s when she decided to make identity an aspiration as she criss-crossed the country to document the costumes and textiles of royal India. That continues to shape her couture collections today.

REBUILDING HERITAGE

“That awareness of identity really triggered an energy in this country to go into our own roots. Suddenly we saw alternatives to buttons, bows and laces, even fasteners and chappals. Things that had completely gone out of a nation’s collective memory,” says Kumar, who toured the country extensively to rescue dying textiles. She worked with culture revivalist Pupul Jaykar, who founded the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in 1990. But it was the women embroiderers of Rajasthan and Bhuj, Gujarat, who overwhelmed her. “They would keep imagining the most vibrant of designs with their needle and thread despite their spartan existence. They would stitch sitting atop the hump of a camel or in the open fields. They would line their mud huts with mica pieces which reflected the light from their evening lamp, bright enough for them to finish their patchwork bedspread. They chose design as their everyday language and saw beauty despite a life of denial. It was the best example of art for art’s sake,” says Kumar.

She had knowledge of textile history, they had the skill. That’s how she began work at crafts clusters promoted by Jaykar. “Most craftsmen knew about their inherited legacies. I was just a catalyst as it all came back to them. They had conversations with their fathers and grandfathers who tapped into their leftover memories and oral history,” says Kumar.

Working with craftsmen in their villages, Kumar was the first designer to decentralise her operations. “Take the craftsman and weaver out of their ecosystem and buttonhole them in urban slums, and you would not get the best work. All my units are in and around Kolkata. There’s a separate design unit, a printing unit, a tailoring unit, an embroidery unit and a finishing unit. Nobody has to leave their homes. I would rather have them do their work surrounded by coconut trees, pukurs (ponds), and rice fields. It’s still an organically rich life. A happy mind means happy designs,” says Kumar who laid the template for the wedding market as we know it — designer lehengas, cocktail gowns and ceremonial wear.

Kumar’s latest couture collection which was launched at the FDCI Couture Week in Delhi

A NOSE FOR BUSINESS

Kumar’s unwavering focus on crafts, textiles and drapes like the ghaghra inspired a generation of designers who became custodians of craft — from Rohit Bal, JJ Valaya, Tarun Tahiliani to now Sabyasachi Mukherjee, the latter even describing her work as “wearable art.” What she also bequeathed was a business model, having opened her first store in Defence Colony in 1966, lending an address to Indians unused to a bespoke experience beyond their tailor. This was at a time when fashion weeks had not happened; the first was held in 2000. “We did showcases. I had the Tree of Life exhibition series with a film on kalamkari and chikankari. Then we had six models come on the ramp to reinterpret the same with modern outfits. We had similar showcases through the Festival of India series abroad. This generated tremendous curiosity in the West about our hand-made textile legacies,” says Kumar.

As export orders for her hand-block prints came from all over, her husband stepped in to help her manage the business. Post-liberalisation, India’s beauty boom and string of pageant winners from India meant Kumar got to define the look for Miss Indias that got global attention. However, that early mover’s advantage also made her aware of the challenges of running a couture store in the West. “For brands like Dior, couture is a lot about public image on the ramp. Their actual sales come from perfumes, lipsticks, shoes, bags, accessories, ready-to-wear. Our designers are only about bespoke experiences, so sustainability overseas is a concern,” says Kumar, who has often been stereotyped as catering to the bridal market. “Things have to move off the shelves to make sense. The bridal market is not just about designers, it is about the parallel hubs like Farrukhabad, which is one of the biggest wholesale markets for bridal wear and has managed to keep the craft of zardozi alive. The wedding market will continue to be a conduit of our crafts,” says Kumar, who still privileges the craftspeople over her label. “Who am I to label heritage?”

However, she has left hard business decisions and innovation to her son Amrish Kumar, who has helmed the Western pret line, Label, for 20 years. Young urban Indian women have taken to its boho chic Parisian appeal. Amrish has been focusing on creating entry-level, pret sub-brands of accessories like Ritu Kumar Homes to look beyond couture. Recently, Reliance Retail acquired 52 per cent in the fashion brand. “We’ve had private equity before but corporatisation helps us scale up the brand, unlock its value and create a larger market,” says Amrish, who imbibed his mother’s sensibilities while accompanying her to Serampore and Kolkata.

Much of Kumar’s life has been about travelling on the road. “Both my sons were in Doon School, so I would plan my travels in such a way that I would be mostly home during their vacations. No mother is ever satisfied but I tried to do the right thing. I would take them to the units, give them little blocks and colours to play with and let them daub on waste cloth. They would come home all black and blue. Some sort of osmosis happened here as both my sons have chosen creative disciplines,” says Kumar. Her other son, Ashvin, is a filmmaker.

These days, she is to be found mostly in her library, working with her archivist on her book. “If you don’t give the next generation any access to what we already have, we will lose our heritage. More cultural misappropriations, like the recent Prada take on Kolhapuri chappals, will happen. The West doesn’t have a textile heritage of its own. Ours cannot be patented because it is centuries old, the common wealth of communities and has just too many designs,” says Kumar, breaking off to go over some sketches. She looks out the window, like she would if she were seated in a tram in Kolkata many decades ago. “It’s the most fantastic transport there ever was. Ashutosh Museum is now a gorgeous new building. But the old bookshops are there as is the Coffee House. Last time I was in the city, I had a coffee,” says Kumar, who still likes to remind herself everyday what made her.