A Love Affair With Handloom… Now And Forever

My love for handloom has always surrounded me, even when I didn’t recognize what it was. When I look back, the trajectory of my life has been primed with a definitive (if not obvious) guide to embrace handloom as my profession, and my passion. As a little girl, I remember my mother instilling in me the beauty of colour and fabric through her fascination for flowers, clothing, and hues alike. She would celebrate the blooming of any flower in our garden. I like to think that I have eternalized her love for flowers through my designs that always favour floral designs and prints. She has also remained my biggest fan and my severest critic when it comes to my choice of attire. 

My mother and father have always been particular about dressing, a habit that has been passed down to them (and to my sisters and I) from their families. This holds particularly true for my patriarchal side; well-recognised aristocrats in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh who loved their fabrics and textile and celebrated the intricate beauty of regional handloom through their ensembles.

Some of my earliest memories from Rewa are those of my great grandmother, who even at the grand old age of 102, woke up every morning at 4:30 to dress in translucent and soft Chanderi saris that rustled against her beautifully stitched blouses.  The distant swish of the fabric, and the many colours in her wardrobe are rich and warm even today. They fill me with energy to create and reinvent Pramaa – my eponymous brand dedicated to handloom – every day.  

Having lived and travelled in various cities throughout the subcontinent – my father served in the military – I have always been exposed to the raw beauty of handloom in villages and its translation into outfits in cities. It remains a point of fascination, and I am determined to never let it die. 

My grooming to embrace fashion as a profession started, I think, when I visited Paris at the age of 13, as a representative artist from India. Sights and sounds aside, I was mesmerized by people dressed in impossibly beautiful clothes without really understanding why. It did drive me to pursue fashion at NIFT, as an undergraduate, a teacher and then postgraduate. 

In 2008, when I was completing an internship in Chennai under the prestigious Upasana, BBC broke a story about Varanasi shutting down over 5000 looms. Artisans were forced to start pulling rickshaws or sell tea to survive, discarding their heritage, even burning them down or selling them. Many committed suicide because nothing was selling. As part of my internship, I was asked to create a collection utilizing the remaining sources and was exposed firsthand to this raw ugly side of our country-taking handloom for granted. Something changed that day: my childhood associations, my love for floral and my exposure to the intricacies of handloom fused into a determination to fight for this beautiful craft and present it on a global platform. 

My first tryst came to light when I was invited to go to Paris with my mentor and present the collection, we had worked upon for six months. The response to our craftsmanship left us both speechless: we came back to Varanasi, triumphant with the security of having saved 250 looms from extinction for the next 5 years with the number of orders we had received. It was spectacular, and I knew I was ready to be a designer, and a patron of handloom. 

Pramaa – beauty meets intelligence – was born in 2009 with my first collection featuring bhagalpur silk (fabrics). Since then I have featured chikankari, chanderi,  Maheshwari and khadi. I have been able to dress women across China, The United Kingdom, the Middle East, Japan, USA and many other countries in my textiles that come straight from the handloom. 

The imperfection of the handloom is its perfection. This cloth, our heritage captures the soul of the artisan who weaves it. The algorithms of figuring out comfort versus cut, the science behind the wearability and the perpetual battle to minimize waste keeps me in love. I am obsessed with Chanderi, it is so heady and rich. Even today, fresh fabric from Chander is greeted with a child-like delight and reverence. It is my responsibility to respectfully convert this beautiful cloth into wearable silhouettes, like a badge that proudly, yet elegantly displays our country’s heritage.

The handloom cannot be allowed die out. we need to ensure it adheres to the times we live in. It is a language that our children need to be taught to respect instead of giving in to fast fashion so they can adapt it in their own way and keep it alive.                                       

  

Handloom has existed for thousands of years, it requires great dedication, technique and precision to create a fabric from handloom. Pramaa by Pratima pandey is proud to carry forward the legacy of handloom, by always making it an essential part of our designs. 

by Asmita Nayar