The sari as art, and political statement

The 'New York Sari' exhibition at the New York Historical, which runs through April, shines a light on how the garment is more than just fashion

- Alisha Haridasani Gupta

(Left): Salonee Bhaman, the curatorial scholar at the Centre for Women's History; and Anna Danziger Halperin, the director of the centre, at the 'New York Sari' exhibition at the New York Historical Society, on October 3, 2025. - Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

(Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

In the summer of 1929, one of India's foremost female freedom fighters, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, travelled to Berlin with several other delegates to attend a conference of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship.

India was still under British rule and, as a result, the Indian representatives at the gathering didn't have a flag. Kamaladevi, who today is better known by her mononym, saw this as deeply unjust. So she and her delegates cut up their saris to create their own flag to fly at the conference's opening gala.

"No one grudged tearing up their fineries," she said, according to a biography, "The Art of Freedom: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Making of Modern India," by Nico Slate, a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. "In fact, we felt free and liberated."

In an instant, those women turned the sari into a political statement.

Among the oldest-known garments, but one that remains fashionable enough to be spotted on red carpets and runways, the 6to 9-yard draped fabric that constitutes a sari has long been more than just clothing: It has been a symbol of empowerment, of global trade, of diplomatic soft power and of resistance.